Changes and Updates

I think my last post was so long that probably NO ONE read through the whole thing. Sorry guys, I'll work on it. There were just too many pictures that I had to put on the blog post! Anyway, no pictures for this post. Mostly because I've been busy putting an old disc of pictures into categories on our computer that I don't have the energy to put them on THIS computer, make sense? These pics are from my college days, so maybe I'll be posting some more "oldies but goodies" soon. My computer crashed a few years ago and this random guy helped me get all my lost pictures off of the hard drive and put them onto a DVD, which I am now FINALLY putting back onto a computer. Sheesh! Procrastinate much? It's fun looking through all the old photos though and seeing how much I have changed. My brown, short hair has turned into long, blonde hair. It was a definite good change :)

So, as the blog title says, I have a couple (small) changes that have happened to me in the last few months. Some of you might not know but I got laid off from my full-time teaching job at Quail Run Primary School (because of so many students dropping out--the parents didn't like how the school was being run), so they had to let 5 teachers go. Suck! I was super disappointed and kind of lost for a while. I just didn't understand why it was happening to me! Turns out everything has turned out just fine! We have been so blessed financially it's not even funny. The Lord has really been looking out for us. I had some health problems as well which made it nice to have some time off of work (everything is good now). And I now have a new job working as the Community Relationship Developer for Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions. It is a great job! I get to work mostly from home and once in a while I put on presentations for high schools around Salt Lake and Utah County. I meet with school counselors around those areas and try to market and sell our free online programs--in the hopes of them letting us run an ACT prep course at their school. I am still learning a lot and have a long ways to go but it has been a great job that I am so grateful to have.

In other news, I also got a NEW calling! I am now officially the Laurel Advisor in my ward. I get to teach practically every Sunday and get to go along with the girls to their activities on Tuesday nights. And Spencer is the teacher's advisor so we often get to go together! I will miss being in Relief Society and seeing my new friends there but I really think this calling is for me and will help me to grow and be a better person. Hurray!

Spencer started school again and is looking into being either an engineer or a computer programmer. He'd do great at either one. I know picking a major can be a very tough choice--but once you pick the right one there is nothing better than knowing you have made a right decision. Kind of like marriage, right? It's good to have peace of mind to know you are doing what Heavenly Father wants you to do. I am still playing basketball with my friends on the Salt Lake city league and I have an awesome work-out buddy, my sister-in-law Laura! Life is great :)

We just bought Mario Party 8 for our Wii. Anyone think that game is good? We think it's kind of lame. We also have Super Mario Bros. and love that game. Does anyone have any good game suggestions for a Wii? Games are very expensive so we want to make sure we buy games that are AWESOME! Well, that's all for now!

                        Christmas and Temple Square
                      December 25, 2010

                  

      A few days before Christmas my beautiful niece Lily came to spend the day with me (and night). I promised her that we would have a night together since it was her birthday in November. We went out to Zupa's for lunch, then to Walgreen's to get some sparkly nail polish with nail decals. Later on we came home and did our fingers and toes. It sure was fun doing that again. Even when you're older it never gets boring to do nails! Later that night we watched the movie UP and played Mario on the Wii. The next day Lily went Christmas shopping with me...what a good sport! I drug her to all the shoe stores in the mall to find the perfect pair of shoes for Spencer. Luckily I found some great ones that he loves!

Here I am playing basketball on a city league team in Salt Lake. I luckily got on a team with some old freshman/sophomore friends from BYU. It was a fun season even though we lost a couple games. Hopefully we can play again next year!

A couple days before Christmas we all went out to Sushi with my brothers and their families. We have been twice in the last two months and I have really grown to love Sushi! Some people hate it but I think it tastes great, especially at Sakura Japanese Grill and Sushi Bar in Orem.

Katie and Lily

Bryan a.k.a. Jackie Chan

Katie and the nieces. They really love her!

Nieces and nephew stockings from Santa. No fireplace so the couch seemed the next best spot.

Before we went to Dustin's for Christmas morning presents and dinner, we stopped by Spencer's parents house to exhange presents and to hear the much-anticipated phone call from Spencer's brother Brandon who is serving a mission in Fortworth Texas. We talked to him for about 40 minutes. It was so much fun hearing his voice and hearing how he is doing. Only one more year until we get to see him again! This picture was taken while they were speaking with him. Super candid!

The DC shoes I bought for him.

Funny/sad story to go along with these shoes. A week before Spencer went outside to go shoot a BB gun with Bryan and afterwards his ADIO shoes got muddy so he left them outside (WITH THE DOG). A couple hours later Spence found the shoes torn to pieces--hence the new DC shoes!

The girls all got new dresses from Santa!

Lainey making a silly face. We all have a couple pics of us making silly faces but I thought hers was the cutest.

So here you go!

Bryan sporting his new undies!

Cutest. Girl. Ever!

                       Dustin's present from Laura. A new small refrigerator for his office!

Katie home made Laura and I aprons. She is so talented and creative.

Thanks Katie!

Eating the pies Katie made. We also had amazing prime rib dinner and Laura practically made everything. She is such an amazing cook. Laura, you da' bomb!

After dinner we all headed up to Salt Lake to see the lights at temple square. Katie had never seen them and we had been waiting to go for a while so we could make it with all the family. I'm so glad we waited because the kids took some great pictures!

If only these were OUR kids. JK!

Sisters! I'm so grateful for these girls. I always wanted a sister growing up...now I have 3!

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope you had a great holiday season like we did.

Tis' The Season!

This past Christmas was definitely one of my favorites. I really enjoyed being around my family and spending some special memories with them this year. This Christmas was celebrated a little differently. Normally I am in California visiting my grandparents, mom, dad, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc, but this year we took a different approach. Since Dustin's family moved out here we thought it best to celebrate Christmas in Utah. And since it was my turn to spend Christmas with my family, it worked out best for us since we already live here. The only negative part to all of this is that my mom and her husband weren't able to be here. Smokey got an infection in his foot and my mom's health wasn't the best so they decided to stay in California and be with her sisters for Christmas. I truly missed being with my mommy!!! It was so hard not to have her there, but she was there in spirit for sure! We all talked to her on Christmas day, as well as my dad and Kris who live in Virginia (and will be here next month!) We also spoke to my grandma who is still in the hospital but still going strong :)

We were very fortunate to still be surrounded by A LOT of family here in Utah. Travis and Katie came to visit for a few days and we also had Spencer's family to spend some good quality time with. Our festivities began with our anniversary in Logan (from my previous post) which was so much fun. After that we had the Harper family Christmas party in Logan at our grandparent's new club house. We ate so much great food and bonded with extended family. Grandma Harper planned some fun Bingo games and we had a white elephant exhange. Spencer won a ton of the Bingo rounds and got some great gifts. Each family was asked to put on a skit or perform a musical number so Mush, my mother-in-law, put together a skit for us that was hilarious and also a little disturbing--basically it was about a kid who ate his crush's book report over Christmas--yeah, I'll spare you the details.

Below: Spencer and his brother Michael. Michael is such a cool brother-in-law to me. He and I get along really well and enjoy debating BYU vs. Utah State and, of course, I usually win ;)

The almost-winning board

Our white elephant gifts we won. Hurray for jewelery and home decor. I just feel bad for the people who got our gifts...silly string and soda. Who doesn't like silly string, right?

Our Skit

Bagley Family from left to right:

                  Richard, Spence, Jules, Michael, Ben, Christie, Mama Bagley



Snowmobiling was next on our list! This year we were super excited because it was the first snowmobile trip of the season. It is a tradition in the Bagley home to go snowmobiling every Christmas Eve with several family friends. Luckily we were able to invite my brother Travis and his wife Katie. They were super excited! We had such a wonderful time with them. It was a bumpy ride up the canyon but once we got to the cabin there are lots of meadows filled with tons of powder that make riding super fun. Spencer is an expert at snowmobiling. I hope I can be as good as him someday but I highly doubt it! He can do power turns so well and when I am on the back with him it is such an adrenaline rush. Here are some pics from the fun day!

Above: Me shoveling the entrance to the outhouse. This outhouse was just recently built and put it in this past summer. The snow was so high!

Below: The boys shoveling the entrance to the cabin. If you look really carefully you can see the top of the front door. This season has produced some excellent snow!

Spencer going up some steep cliffs in the meadow. We had a blast up in the meadows, especially Travis who was having so much fun going super fast!

Travis and Katie=Tratie

The CABIN!

Bagley's, Brown's, and Quentin.

Cute!

We left at about 3pm and spent the rest of Christmas Eve with Dustin, Laura, and the kids. The next day was Christmas and that will be included in my next post. Happy New Year 2011!!!



One Year Gone By...

For our 1 Year Anniversary I wanted it to be a special and relaxing weekend for us. We stayed at the Crystal Inn in Logan and ate at the Blue Bird Restaurant (a place we had been to when we were dating). Logan is a special place for us because that is where we went on a lot of dates when Spencer went to Utah State. If we could, we would love to live there someday (if only it wasn't so dang cold!).

To celebrate, we reminisced about all our favorite memories from the past year and had some bubbly in champaigne glasses. As gifts we bought each other a Nintendo Wii and have been playing Mario Brothers and enjoying Netflix!

I made sure to save our wedding cake for our one year anniversary. I heard so many great stories of how the cake stays really good and tastes just like it did on your wedding day. LIES! We barely could eat any of it because it went bad...probably because we left it out a couple days before we ate it since we were eating so many sweets around the time of our anniversary. By the time we finally got to eating it the frosting smelled foul, but Katie and Travis made us try it. Gross! But I'm glad we did it for the memory. Hehe.

Here are a couple pictures from our wedding one year ago :) The first two are from the reception in Sonora, and the rest are from the reception and temple in Utah. We were sealed in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple by his grandfather Richard Bagley. Such a special experience for me to go through the temple!

Here we are giving our speeches at the Sonora Reception. Elder Bagley is very known to the people of Sonora, since this is where he served his mission. My brother Dustin was his ward mission leader and when Spencer came home from his mission he made Spencer look me up and take me on a date.

Who knew we would end up getting married? Thanks again Dust!

Our wonderful family and friends who came to the sealing

I couldn't have asked for a better person to be my husband. I love him so much and we have grown together in so many ways over this past year. How lucky I am to spend so much time with my best friend. He always makes me laugh, is kind, loving, and such a hard worker. I love you so much Spence!

                            Some of our favorite memories from this last year

1. Honeymoon to St. George

2. Weekend adventures in Monte Cristo

3. Going to California and back to see family and my dad's wedding

4. Celebrating my 25th birthday

5. Making our house a home

6. Spencer teaching me how to cook...seriously, he's so good!

7. Snowmobiling & dirt biking

8. Celebrating our first Christmas together

9. Spencer almost breaking his collar bone in a bike wreck...so awesome!

10. Marathon in St. George, cliff jumping, and swimming!