The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

This last month Cassidy had to go through an interview process to complete one of his larger steps in completing his degree. So at the first of April we got the news of how that interview went...

CASSIDY GOT ACCEPTED!!!

Yes he got into the education program at Utah Valley University and so now he can stay on track to graduate in December of 2012.

All That Jazz

At Christmas my Aunt LaWayne got her firm tickets to the March 28th Jazz game. Knowing that I am a huge Jazz fan and the closest family member she let me come with her. This is not our first Jazz game together, but this was our first one sitting this close. If you look at the picture below I am pointing to the row we were seated in. It is row 9!!!!! The game was amazing sitting that close even though the team has gone through some major changes in the last 6 weeks and isn't exactly hot right now.

This is the view from our seats without any zoom. Pretty good, right? I forgot how tall basketball players are :)

Can't wait for the game to start!

Even though you can't really tell from the photo LaWayne and I are standing on the court during warm ups. The usher would only allow us one picture and he isn't exactly going to win any photography awards in the near future. This was my first time on the court though so it was a pretty exciting moment.

My two favorite men in the Jazz organization right now, Jeff Hornacek and Paul Millsap.

Opening tip off. We lost by 5 in overtime, but overall it was a pretty exciting game.

The Jazz Bear and bear in training. I thought his jersey with the number 1/2 was pretty cute.

Thanks for taking me with you to the game LaWayne. I had a blast and love living close enough that we can spend so much time together.

Bridging The Gap

As some of you might know a 23 mile section of I-15 in Utah is under construction. With widening the interstate Utah must replace several of their bridges along the section. On Saturday night Cassidy and Randi had the opportunity to go and watch them move the Sam White Bridge into place. We knew this was a blog worthy event when UDOT (Utah Department of Transportation) workers came around taking pictures of the crowd for their facebook page.

So Cassidy and Randi stood outside in the cold and rain from 11 pm to 1 am to watch them move the bridge off the original supports.

Here are some cool little tidbits about the bridge and how it is moved.
-The bridge weights 3.82 million pounds-It is 354 feet long and 80 feet wide (the longest two span bridge ever moved in the western hemisphere).
-It took 12,700 hours to build and move the bridge into place.

-It was moved by a Self Propelled Modular Transporter (SPMT) that uses hydraulic rams to hoist the bridge 21 feet off the ground.
-The SPMT has over 200 tires and is ran by a single joist stick.

We both had a good time watching the wonders of modern engineering at work, even though it was cold and rainy.

Here is the finished project.

Back To My Roots

Last week was Cassidy's spring break so we decided to head to my hometown of Elko for the weekend. We had talked about it for quite a while and my parents were excited for our visit. My mom said Cassidy always looks bored when he is in Elko so they found a few things for him to do this trip. I wonder if Cass will ever want to go visit my parents again? :)

Friday when we arrived my parents were both working so we stopped in and said hi and then headed home to have dinner ready for them. Cassidy started on his first project of rehanging the casing around the door to the garage.

Before he could hang the casing we had to take a trip to Home Dept for a hammer because my dad's has come up missing. While there my parents decided it would be nice to update a couple of the light fixtures and this was a good time because Cass knows exactly how to do that. So after he finished with the door he got to hang a new chandelier in the dining room. Isn't he a lucky guy :)

This is my feeble attempt at helping. I held the light while he wired it.

While Cass was busy with his chores I helped my dad figure out exactly how to use his Silhoutte cutter. And my mom made cinnamon rolls.

The finished product. My parents are really excited about how much brighter the room is.

First thing Saturday morning Cass changed the light fixture in the living room. From then on all my dad could talk about was how much brighter the living room was and how much he loved the new light. Cass definitely figured out how to impress the Nortons :)

The trip was not all work though. Saturday afternoon we went to the Northeastern Nevada Museum to see the new wildlife wing and the bald eagle Silver pictured below. There is a cool story about Silver that you can find on www.outbacknevada.us if you are really interested.

Cass was also impressed with the large gun collection that the museum has.

This is me with next to Bing Crosby's denim suit that he had as honorary mayor of Elko.

The museum also has these fun games on loan from Oregon to help you learn about taking care of your body. This is Cass trying to balance and my mom playing the game to find out what a portion size of different foods should look like.

Finally the wildlife wing. This is fairly new to the museum so none of us had ever been to it before. I think we were pretty impressed at the size of the edition and number of animals for a small town museum.

In front of the museum in front of a Pony Express cabin that one of my dad's ancestors actually stayed in.

After the museum we made another stop at Home Depot for some tiles for my dad to practice with his vinyl cutter. While we there it was decided that the light in the kitchen now needed to be changed because it didn't match any of the other lights so Cass got to change a third light, but I don't have a picture of that because the camera was dead at this point. My parents did pay him and me by taking us to eat at the new fancy restaurant in one of the Casinos. I got carded and did not have my ID on me so I had to run home and come back in order to enjoy my Dr. Pepper. Good thing Elko is a small town :)

And finally no trip to Elko would be complete without a picture of the missionaries that live in my parent's basement, Elder Merrill and Elder Ramos.

Chillin' With My Peeps

This last weekend we were able to spend time with a lot of friends and family we don't see very much. We went to lunch with our friends Karen and Ben at the Purple Turtle in Pleasant Grove. We have been wanting to go there for a while so we were pretty excited to finally make it. Sorry about the picture we forgot the camera and tried to take a picture from the car as we drove by later.

Then we went to visit Cassidy's cousin in the hospital for a few hours before heading to Salt Lake to meet Randi's cousins from Idaho Falls that were down for the weekend. We went to dinner with Wes, Ashurity, Piper, and Kendall and LaWayne before heading to their hotel to swim. Piper is three and was pretty excited to have so many people around to play with. Thanks for inviting us to hang out with you on your vacation we had a good time with everyone.

Nice pose LaWayne!

The whole gang trying to get a picture of Piper with her new bear from Build a Bear, can you tell who the center of attention was :)

HURRAY!!!!

From these pictures can you tell what the exciting news is? This is us in the car at the bank drive thru paying off my car! My mom and dad were lucky enough to be with us which was pretty exciting because it was just two years ago when my dad took me to "look" at cars and we both drove away with a new one :)

Here we are with the titles to both of our cars. In the last 10 months since we got married we have paid off both or our cars. We had to wait a week to post this though because we didn't have the title to my car until today because the credit union had to make sure the check cleared and then mail us the title.

Here our pictures of our two most expensive possessions. And the best part no debt!

February

So February flew by as a pretty quiet month with nothing to really do an entire blog post about so we saved all of the pictures from the month to do one big post (it really isn't that big because like I said it was a quiet month). Some activities not pictured include: we had dinner with different friends once a week this month which was nice to hang out with more couples, Randi had a sunbeam class Valentine's Day party, we celebrated Cassidy's brothers' birthdays with his family, and Cassidy volunteered in a special needs classroom at the junior high as well as attending school full time and working full time. There was a point where between work and school we only saw each other four hours in three days. I will be so glad when we are done with school.
Anyway on to the exciting things! At the beginning of February my brother told us he sent us a package from Hong Kong. He then had fun for a week making up things that it could be and driving me crazy because I can't stand not knowing what presents are. Well, the box finally came and it became official that BJ is the best big brother in the ENTIRE WORLD! He sent us an Apple TV! We had been talking about getting one in August for our birthdays (August is in the middle) because we had other things we wanted to spend our money on right now. But BJ saved us the long wait and pretty much gave us a little piece of heaven. It is so easy to watch movies that are on the computer now! Here are a couple pictures of our new favorite toy.

We also got to babysit for our first time as a married couple. Our friends Mike and Angela have a 1 year old named Cooper that we got to watch for a Saturday afternoon. It was pretty fun to have a trial run as parents and I had a blast watching Cassidy and Cooper play.

Then at the end of the month my parents came to Utah for a couple of doctor's appointments. While they were here I spent Friday shopping with them while Cassidy was in class and then Saturday morning we all drove up to Ogden to go to the temple. Cassidy and I are still working on attending all of the temples in Utah and we needed to go to Ogden before April when it closes for a couple of years to remodel. We are pretty close we have been to 9 out of 13 temples in Utah. It was a dreary day, but we had fun going with my parents.

We also did one other important thing with my parents, but that will get it's own blog post probably next week. Be excited :)