Bliss, huh?

I recently was perusing an old high school friend's facebook page which boldly emphasized her numerous days of bliss since her recent marriage to her "superfantastic" husband. I hate to single her out because I have seen many since pages with similar notes (some much after the wedding day), but it really got me thinking... I was recently married and the stereotype clearly states there should be "wedded bliss," but I'm just not feeling it. Me and Brett have been married for almost three months and I would describe the major feeling in my life to be something more along the lines of "wedded stress" or maybe "post-marriage anxiety." I have experienced multiple bounced checks, job loss, late payments, major disappointments due to lack of funding for school, decrease in job satisfaction and the loss of a loved one, but no where in my summer so far have I experienced "bliss." Maybe I'm doing things wrong. Maybe it's just the cynic in me saying that these "blissful" people are only as happy as they are pretending... But my life feels empty and weak, a far cry from satisfying, and a long shot away from bliss. I would like to think I'm just being a realist, but I'm probably just ranting. Anyways. Thanks for listening.

Almost Famous.

Dude, we are famous!!

I am still in long awaited anticipation of the rest of these pictures, but Stacey (one of our wedding photographers) posted some of our bridal/groomal pictures on her blog! WOOT! I feel so privileged! If you wanna see them go to:

http://web.me.com/twisty834/Site/Blog/Entries/2009/4/21_Brett_%26_Savannah_-_Groomals.html

They are purty.... :-)

We are still alive!!

So- It has been far too long since I last posted. Here is the laundry list of things that have occured in our lives since January:

-I (Savannah) finally found a car to buy with the money I received from the insurance for my car being totalled. I was so proud of myself because I made the decision to buy it all on my own and it seemed like a really nice, sound car. Apparently my judgement is way off, because I have already spent a few hundred dollars on repairs, and it still has problems.... :-P Guess that will always be the story of my life...

-In 4.25 hours and counting, I will have completed the most obnoxious, horrible, terrifying semester of my life! The last few months have been really difficult with juggling full time school, full time work, and full time wedding planning! :-S After this afternoon my life will be dedicated to full time napping! Oh, wait, I still have a wedding to plan and money to make... Drats.

-Brett finally was able to find a new job and he again is a member of corporate America (this time employed by Target.)

-I got my wisdom teeth out last month and it was awesome! I was dreading getting it done like no other, and I nearly had a panic attack on the drive from Milford to St. George that morning, but it really wasn't too bad! I worked the next night and I felt just fine. Savannah is invincible I tell you, downright invincible.

-Brett finally cleaned his room for the first time since moving into his apartment in August! Woo Hoo!!!

-The wedding plans are slowly coming together.... there is so much still to do, but after today I will have a lot more time to focus on working out the details. I am so excited to be married in less than a month!

-Brett is going to be ordained an Elder this Sunday and our parents are going to meet each other for the first time... that will sure be interesting... :-)

Yeah, So that's pretty much our lives as of right now... It sound so very boring, but I obviously haven't had a spare moment to designate for blogging, so that should say something, right? Oh, and we did our Bridal/Groomal pictures yesterday! It was the perfect day for it! The sun was shining, it was warm, and we even got to share the day with Pocahontas and paintballers. Woot!
Here are some self portraits from the day:


Self portrait of us riding in the back of the jeep after the good pictures all got taken.


Look at this sexy man!

Attitude, attitude (say it with a French accent, it sounds cooler)

Well, peace out all!

What the random?

Oh the joy of a cancelled class. Because my mind is so busy stressing about work tonight, I don't feel like doing homework (which is what I SHOULD be doing), so I'm going to do this survey that was emailed to me awhile back. Woo-hoo!

Place a check next to all the things you have done:

( x) Gone on a blind date
(x) Watched someone die
( ) Been to Canada
( ) Been to Mexico
(x) Been to Florida
(x) Been to Europe
( ) Been to South America
( ) Been to Central America
( ) Been to Asia
(x) Been on a plane
( ) Been on a Cruise

( ) Visited All 50 States
(X) Been lost
(x) Been on the opposite side of the country
( ) Gone to Washington , DC
(X) Swam in the ocean
(X) Cried yourself to sleep
(x) Played cops and robbers
(x) Recently colored with crayons
( ) Sang Karaoke
(x) Paid for a meal with coins only
(x) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't
(x) Made a prank phone call...
(x) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose.
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(X) Danced in the rain
(x) Written a letter to Santa Claus
( ) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(x) Watched the sunrise with someone
(X) Blown bubbles
(X) Gone ice-skating
( ) Been skinny dipping outdoors
(x) Gone to the movies

1. Any nickname? Sav, Savy G, Savy, Sambanna
2. Mother's name? Barbara
3. Favorite drink? Dr. Pepper... it makes the world taste betta, yeah!
4. Body Piercing? Just my ears
5. On a scale of 1-10, how much do you love your job? 9.5-- I don't like the stress and some days it's hard as heck, but overall, I think it's amazing. In fact, that makes me think of an amazing quote which I feel the need to add here:

"Somestimes when people ask us, 'How can you do this work?' we think, 'How could we not?' How could we have the ability to contribute to a journey of hope and healing and not use it? There is no other work that we would find this meaningful, challenging, and rewarding. What other work would allow us to engage fully--our minds, our hearts, our spirits? How could we choose not to do something that demands our creativity, all of our intellectual capacity, all of our feelings, our whole humanity?"

Amazing one, huh? That's how I feel about my job.

6. Birthplace? Orem, UT
7. Favorite vacation spot? Anywhere with a freaking beach!
8. Favorite movie? All time fave would probably have to be Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
9. Favorite holiday? Thanksgiving
10. Favorite dessert? Cheesecake
11. Favorite food? Chinese!
12. Favorite day of the week? Ones with no school.
13. Favorite brand of body soap? The cheap kind that smells good.
14. Favorite toothpaste? Crest Whitening Expressions in Vanilla Mint. Mmm, mmm.
15. Favorite smell? The subtle smell of the people I love.
16. How do you relax? Listen to music, kiss my lover, do nothing.
17. How do you see yourself in 10 years? As a therapist, a wife, probably a mother.
18. Furthest place you will send this message to? Hmm... cyberspace.... ? haha

The long anticipated Update

Ok, so now that I have a few minutes to spare, I am going to try and update what I can. Me and Brett always have so much going on, so things just pile up and I hate just spitting them out like a laundry list, but it seems that that is the most effective way to do it! So here is what we have been up to from the most recent:

We got in a horrible freakin car accident (which I already wrote about). I have been patiently awaiting the insurance's decision on whether or not to call the car a total loss (although it seemed pretty obvious that it was). They finally let me know it was "totalled" and gave me less than 3 days to find another mode of transportation because I was told I would need to return my lovely Dodge Magnum rental. The newest edition to this story involves a trip to the car rental company where no one was there and Savannah now gets to pay close to 100 dollars to keep the car for extra days even though she did everything on her part to return the dang thing on time! Isn't that the freakin story of my life? Anyway, I am very anxious to find a new (well used), reliable, cheap car that will get good gas mileage and drive well in the snow. If you know of any, let me know, because I have a feeling I'm going to get desperate pretty soon.

Another big, and more exciting event in our lives recently was Brett's 21rst birthday! Unfortunately we weren't able to go all out and road trip to Vegas like we did for my big day, but we still had some fun! Brett was a little bummed because we had to take our Sociology Final on his big day (what a great present, huh?) but we still tried to make the day fun. We went out to eat at Tucanos (the best Brazilian grill around!) and later went to see a movie together. My birthday present to Brett was surprising him with a visit from his brother and tickets to both of them to go see a concert with one of his favorite bands! Here is a picture of him with the lead singer.

Ok, so I guess other than those two things, we haven't had anything major happen that I have photo documentation of. However, I do have a few fun pictures I thought I would share.

My little sister took these pictures for us at a park up in Draper near where I work. (Pretty good for a 9 year old, huh? )I had taken the kids from my work there on an activity, and it was so beautiful that I wanted to get a few pictures of me and Brett up there. The playground there is so freakin awesome. They have thesee little spinny things you can sit and spin on and we spent a lot of time getting ridiculously dizzy. It was awesome!

Is Brett smarter than a 5th grader??

One day at school we saw this booth mimic-ing the popular tv show, and since they were still recruiting contestants, Brett joined in! His "college" team beat the 5th graders! Woo-hoo! I thought the whole thing was way too funny to not snap a poloroid!

Well, that is mostly all that has been happening with us! Luckily now we both have a fair amount of free time because of our lack of school for a few weeks (YAY!!) so we are catching up on time together and with our families for the holidays. Merry Christmas!

The Crash

So, today I mourn the death of my baby....She took her last breath just before ten o'clock last night. Sadly, I took her for granted. When she broke down or wouldn't even start at all, I kicked her, cursed at her, and wished she were dead. Now as I look back, I realize we truly did have some good times. We've sure been through a lot together.

See this beautiful, big dent? We got this one together the summer after I bought her. Me and my sister were camping with our family when we decided to drive to Duchesne to see fireworks with my cousin who lived in a small town nearby. Long story short, we spent the night in Neola (at my cousin's house) and in the morning, got completely lost with the directions back to our camp. We were in the middle of nowhere, going like 20 miles an hour on a dirt road, when all of a sudden, my sister squeals! The next thing I know, I see a deer bolting towards the side of my car in my peripheral vision, and boom! it hits us. I was pissed! I got out of the car to survey the damage, and later beat myself up that I hadn't tried chasing after the deer to get it's insurance information. That dang doe is gonna pay someday!

The next adventure we had together was just a few months ago while me and Brett were still living in Cedar City. We had spent most of the night over at Brett's family's house in Milford and were driving back to Cedar really late. I was exhausted, so Brett insisted he was wide awake and up for the drive. Unfortunately, he wasn't. He fell asleep and I woke up to the car bumping up and down on the gravel on the opposite side of the road. That also woke Brett up and he jerked the car back to the road, but over-corrected, so we did a 180 and the passenger side of the car barrelled into a barbed wire fence. The picture above is not of the damage done that time (although there were still a lot of big scratches and a dent to match the one the deer had made). It was a pretty scary experience, but all three of us were O.K.

You think it ends there? Of course not! In the end of October I was running late for school, and all of a sudden, the road I'm on is closed off! I didn't have time to sit and wait all day, so I pulled onto this dirt road and tried to back out and head the opposite way. All of a sudden, the stopped cars started moving, and I guess the guy who was in front of me originally, moved closer to where I was backing out, and my car smashed into the back of the utility trailer he was pulling. Of course I didn't make it to school, and wound up with this nasty back end to flaunt around town.

Now for the final goodbye. Last night me and Brett attempted to see The Dark Knight (because it came out on video today), and the dollar theater sent us home because there weren't enough people to show the movie. (Who does that, first of all?!) So we get home and try to make popcorn so we can cuddle and watch a Christmas movie at least, but there is no popcorn to be found! What is a movie without popcorn, right? So we hop back into my car to go to the store down the road for some, and little did we know, we would greatly regret that decision. It was freezing cold outside (like 10 degrees, literally!) and the wind was howling. It had snowed a little earlier, so we were driving really slow. Unfortunately, that didn't stop us from completely losing control of the car and sliding downhill on a complete sheet of black ice. We hit into the curb right in front of the last house on the street. We were shaken up and tried to reverse to straighten the car out, when another car comes careening down the same road completely out of control. My car had hit the curb straight on, so we were at an angle and the car smashed right into the passenger side of my car, completely totalling it. I was so terrified that Brett was crushed, but luckily he came away without a scratch. We spent two hours outside in the freezing cold waiting for cops, filling out paperwork, waiting for a tow truck, and finally walking home once things calmed down somewhat. It was a pretty traumatic night, but luckily, everyone involved was fine. I got a knarly seatbelt burn/cut on my neck, and some minor aches and pains, but unfortunately, I can't say the same for my baby. She is sitting in a tow yard all sad and alone and very mangled.

So this is dedicated to you my baby! Thank you for all the good times, and even though I always whined about your flaws, you will surely be missed!

I got my dress!

So, I have TONS to update on here when I get more time, but I just had to post something real quick because I BOUGHT MY WEDDING DRESS TODAY! Woo-hoo! I finally picked out the perfect one (actually it was the first one I fell in love with when I first started browsing) and today I went and put a down payment to order it! This whole wedding thing is starting to become very real! It's only like 5 months away now! I am getting more excited the closer it gets. AHH! Haha. Well I'll post more later when I'm not stressing about finals. Peace out.

Let them eat cake!

Ok, so while I have a spare minute, I just have to share mine and Brett's latest adventure. Yesterday we went to our final bridal show before the big day, and it was awesome! We entered a wedding cake eating contest and won second place!! Woot!! Luckily, the second place prize was the one we actually wanted, so we are even closer to having the most FUN wedding EVER! :-) I have to give Brett nearly all the credit though.... Because I am not a big cake fan, he ate most of the disgusting stuff, while I gagged the small bits down that I could. It was the most awful thing ever, but it was so worth it! If you want to see what we won, come to the wedding!!

In addition to deciding never to eat cake EVER again, we had a fun time going to the Vineyard cornmaze with Sarah, Antonio and Natalie. Since we got there just as they were letting the last group in, we were told we needed to be finished by the time it got dark. Well, we were done before dark, but unfortunately we got locked in!!! Apparently they forgot about us.... So we had to explore a little and find a way out. Here are some pictures:

Sneak Peek

Wow, it has been so long since I last wrote!! Things have been incredibly busy for us over the last few months!!! Because I still don't have a lot of time to include all the details of what we have been up to, I will just give you the highlights on both of us:

Savannah:

-loves her new job, even though it was very new and a little hard to get used to
-is so busy taking 6 classes in school she barely has time to think

-loves living at home a lot more than she thought she would (you really can't beat free rent!)

-hates the ridiculous amounts of homework she has, but LOVES two of her classes (Sociology and Abnormal Psych) because she is passionate about the subjects

-is still broke despite not paying rent, and may have to look for a new (really old car) soon because hers is about to give out...

-is so excited that she doesn't have school for the next two days, although she wishes she didn't have to work so she could really have a break.

-hates seeing Brett for literally only 5 minutes some days.

-is really excited for Christmas despite the fact that she can't afford to buy presents because it will at least be a long break from school.

-has decided to take one more year at UVU to get her Bachelors Degree so she doesn't have to stress out so much, and now she doesn't need to take summer school right after she and Brett get married!! YAY!!!

-is still antsy about planning the big day, although she doesn't have the time.

-hates that it already snowed up here and is getting really cold!

Brett:

-found a really awesome condo to live in until they get married, and it's only ten minutes away from Savannah's house!

-loves school, even though he thinks some of his classes are boring.

-is still working at Home Depot in American Fork, freezing his tooshy off in the lot

-loved that he got to go see Anberlin and Scary Kids, Scaring Kids, two of his favorite bands last week!

-received first place in the Cashier Olympics at work! (woo hoo for free dinner at Applebees!)

-is buying his first real suit tomorrow and is excited to hang out with his parents

-wishes he lived in New York City so he could be on Cash Cab.

Ok, so there you have it. That's pretty much it. A big highlight of the month is that we got our engagement pictures done last week and afterwards went to a really awesome concert! Since we don't get all our pictures until after the wedding, I kinda cheated and took pictures of them online on our proofing site with my camera... Shh... haha. So, they really are much higher quality than this, but I wanted you to at least be able to have a little sneak peek.... Here you go! (These were a couple of the ones our photographer chose as his favorites):

Here are a few pictures of the bands that we saw right afterwards! It was an awesome show!! One of the best we have ever been to! The first one is the guy from Straylight Run, the next one is Scary Kids, and the last but not least, Anberlin!

After the Big Move

So, we are finally starting to get settled into things up here in Utah County! Woo-hoo is it good to be home! (For me, at least.) I hate all the unnecessary traffic, and the fact that any store (WALMART!) is highly congested at any hour of any given day. So ANNOYING! But I guess those are things I can live with. So, to update you on our goings on for the past couple weeks, they are as follows:

--Brett got a job at the Home Depot in American Fork. It's nice because he is close to my parent's house, so I can come visit him on his lunch break, but it's a bummer because it's so far from school, and he was demoted from head cashier to regular cashier/lot attendant. I guess he still makes the same amount, but it would have been nice if he could be FULL time, so we could get at least some of his tuition and books paid for by their tuition reimbursement plan. He has already started working, and he says he likes it ok so far. Hopefully he can get to know more people so work will go by faster for him.

--I got a job at a place called Youthcare up in Draper! Finally! I will be starting orientation next week, which I am stoked about! I will be working with troubled teens basically, which is a great way to get a foot in the door with the counseling career I have chosen. The pay and benefits are GREAT, and the people I've met so far, have seemed awesome! The only drawback is, I will be missing most of the my first two days of school for orientation, and I won't have a set schedule for awhile because I will be on-call. But I think I can live with that for now. It helps that I don't have to worry about a rent payment anymore!! (I'm mooching off the parents....haha).

--We still haven't found Brett a permanent place to live yet, which is the biggest thing on our minds right now. The "perfect apartment" just doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight! That may have changed as of 10 minutes ago, though. I just called on a really nice place that sounds perfect, and we are going to see it tommorow! Wish us luck!

--School starts for us both this next Wednesday, and we are very excited! I didn't really think I was looking forward to it (I'm so burned out with all my previously gained knowledge!!), but I think I really am. It will be fun to have a change of scenery. We even have the same schedule 3 days a week so we can have lunch together and we are even in one of the same classes! Wow! Haha. That might be interesting. We are going to ride the bus to school on Monday to pick up all our books and map out our classes. It's definitely going to be a big change for Brett, but hopefully he will catch onto things quickly.

Ok, so those are the major things that have been going on in our lives up here so far. Some other fun things we have done since being up here are:

--Watched all of the gymnastic events of the Olympics (Go Nastia and Shawn!)

--Went to Lagoon and had a blast all day with Emily and Skyler.

--I surprised Brett with a romantic and fun picnic basket dinner at La Caille up in Salt Lake.

--Tonight we are going camping with Sarah, (and hopefully Dave) Natalie, and Antonio and I'm sure we will have a great time up in Provo Canyon!

Well, that's about it. I will post some picture of our visits to La Caille, Lagoon and Provo Canyon later on when I have more time!

The Big 21!

July 21. Wake up. Get all excited that tommorow is my birthday. Get dressed. Shower. Text Hillary because today is HER birthday. Brush teeth. Floss.

Heck, I don't remember the rest of the details. All I know, is that I had a freakin awesome birthday!

It was monday and I got stuck with working the night shift so that I could have another day off in the week. I wasn't too thrilled. (After all, I was working with Dan... haha) However, the night actually went by pretty fast; By the time 10 o'clock rolled around though, I was ready to go! I loaded my bags, picked up Brett from work and we were on the road!

For all you Gilmore Girls fans out there, you will totally love this! I have grown up with them, so of course I had to steal their brilliant plan for Rory's 21rst birthday bash. Of course I couldn't make it all the way to Atlantic City, but we thought Vegas (and Mesquite!) were a good compromise. After all, we were due for a little vacation anyway.

So we drove our little butts down to Mesquite where we checked in at the Oasis. We got there almost an hour before midnight Nevada time, so first things first, we decided to check in to our room. It was a muggy 102 degrees outside, so when the keys for our first room didn't work and we had to haul our stuff to the lobby and then back to a different room, I wasn't too thrilled. Ugh. I thought the manager who helped me sure took the easy way out. But once we got to our room, I was glad our keys hadn't worked!! We got lucky and ended up with a remodeled room, which was way freakin nice! A lot better than the first room we were almost stuck with...

After getting things settled in, we decided to scope out the casino. My heart sank when the whole section of blackjack tables at one end of the casino were empty... I thought we were going to have to rush to the Virgin River, and we only had 10 1/2 minutes til midnight!!!! Crap! But, finally we walked around a bit more and found a $2 table for me to gamble away my life savings... The chinese/japanese ?? dealer was kind of a retard. She kept speaking some language that definitely was not english, so for the first ten minutes I had no idea what was going on. And I kept losing! Ugh. That does not go well with me. Finally we got a new dealer who was still chinese/japanese ?? but he at least spoke english to us and was cool. I finally started winning some back, and decided to quit while I was ahead (or at least not losing anymore...) I played 21 as I turned 21, and I felt like a freakin bamf doing it. Haha. Of course since I hadn't gambled with 21 dollars quite yet, I had to play with a few more on the slot machines (which I also lost at). I am just not a born gambler! Or maybe my magic 21 luck decided not to show up.

At the end of the night, this is where we crashed. Not bad for 25 bucks, eh?

So we woke up the next morning, drove down to Vegas and spent the whole day shopping. When we were finished I was about ready to DIE! However, we attained our goal of purchasing our "lucky" 21 items! When we finally arrived at the Rio, I was dissppointed in our "suite". Apparently last time when we were "upgraded" I guess we REALLY were, because the room we got this time was like a Circus exploded. Oh, well. It served its purpose.

What a lovely room. :-P


The rest of the night seemed to get worse from there.... After checking in, we wanted to swim to cool off and the nicest pool was closed. What a bummer. And the ghetto one that was open, closed a half hour later. Lame! What hotel does that? So we scooted over to the Coke store, where we bought the sweetest "coke can" cups and of course our traditional bottles of Coke. And this time, we even got to meet the Coca Cola bear! AWESOME!


From there we had to pop into the M&M store and play around for a bit. It was packed as usual!



He looks like he is trying to suck up and tell her she is so gorgeous. In reality, he just wants a piece! Har, har har.

So many colors.... So little time.....





This purse was made of M&M wrappers!!! So freakin sweet! Except for the fact that it was over 100 bucks!


After all our childish fun, we didn't have time to ride the Gondolas at the Venitian as planned, so we tried to see the Pirate show at Treasure Island. Well lets just say the view we got was not worth the 30 minutes it took to find a parking spot, and circle our way through the entire hotel. Not that it mattered, because the days of the cool sinking ships are over! Now the show is just a bunch of hookers dancing around for some extra cash. Cool to some, maybe, but not to me. Dinner at the end of our night, finally made things better!! We made it to the Cheesecake Factory for my real birthday dinner which was AMAZING! By the time we were done there, I was ready for bed!!!

I don't think we had ever noticed this big Trojan Horse in Caesar's Palace. It was huge! Haha.



Well, that is my big 21 in a nutshell. Not everything went according to plan, but overall it was a fun birthday. And of course Brett surprised me with concert tickets to a show up in Salt Lake in a few weeks because he's awesome like that. Well, currently we are in the process of moving, which is why it's taken so long to post anything. July was so full for us! We had a dentist appointment every week, job hunt/interviews up north, my birthday in Vegas, two family reunions, a trip to Zion, etc. SO fun, but SO busy! As soon as we get things settled in up north, I'm sure we will have a lot more to talk about. Til then, peace out!