Happy Birthday!!!

Well, in an effort to endlessly procrastinate my homework, I have found a temporary distraction in blogging. I love seeing all the updates of my friends and family! Jon and I initially started this blog last year in lieu of writing a monthly e-mail update to his family. As girlfriend of the time, I was somehow appointed to helping Jon to be more diligent about actually following through on this commitment. Not sure how I ended up with that designation, but lets be honest, Jon needed the help. (Love you baby!)

Today, I chanced upon Allie Shumway's blog. We were in the same dance group a few times back in high school and she's an absolutely adorable girl. On her blog, she mentioned that she is going to print her blog and make it into a book-what a great idea! As I was thinking about how it has been fun to capture the events of our dating, courtship, engagement, and marriage on our blog, I started to wonder how long its been since we started making this online record. Well, guess what? We started exactly one year ago today! Happy birthday to our blog! In honor of the beginning of our blog, I am going to post a picture capturing one of the beginnings of our relationship... the night we "pretended to be engaged" and took a fake engagement picture! If we only knew what we were getting ourselves into!

...and now, I WILL do my homework.

Our New Best Friend

Jon and I have a new best friend. You may have heard of him- Harold B. Lee?



The Harold B. Lee library, that is. Somehow, somehow, I am going to have to find it in my being to not despise the library. I have already come to the painful realization of how many hours, no days, of my life I will be spending here again at the onset of this new semester.

Since I am now finishing my upper-division Political Science courses, the majority of my semester will consist of major research papers. The positive side of this is that I am free to explore numerous topics that interest me with a distinct research design for each of my classes. The downfall of this academic all-you-can-eat is that I can count on being at the library as close to 24/7 as humanly possible.

In the meantime, I am sure you will all be on the edge of your seat, just waiting to hear if I choose to focus my research on divisive primary election outcomes in newly democratic nations or Islamic authoritarianism and female empowerment. Please, please, I know its exciting but try to keep your shirt on while I deliberate. I promise to keep you all posted the moment I decide. Ok, who am I kidding? Is anyone still reading this?

Oh how I miss the days when my biggest stresses were making sure my cute little red wagon didn't run out of corn, my adorable husband had dinner on his plate each night, and that we didn't miss Deal or No Deal.

BACK TO SCHOOL: The newlywed days of a blissfully carefree summer schedule are officially over.

On A More Upbeat Note....
GO COUGARS!!!