FINALs.. LY it's over.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh. Boy does it feel good to be done with this semester. I think I survived my finals, hopefully my grades will reflect that. After getting through the green card interview it was all I could do to focus on finals week. We are very ready to enjoy our Christmas break. We are looking forward to seeing those of you who will be in Utah. For the rest of you schmoes that aren't coming to town we are thinking of you and we love you.

It,s a green day... not necessarily environmentally friendly or envious though.

As some of you may or may not know Naoko and I went to SLC earlier this morning, I mean early we left Logan just before 6. It was for the big interview for her adjustment of status from Japanese beauty to Japanese beauty with a permanent visa. We did a lot of research on these interviews online reading other peoples experiences. We came to the conclusion that the interviews always either go really bad or really good. In our situation they would rather that Naoko had come on a fiance visa, since she didn't we didn't know if our interview would be one of the "difficult" ones.
Like I mentioned we left Logan just before 6 am, which I thought would be early enough to hit the 7:30 interview time. Well we hit the morning rush hour around Layton and moved slowly til we got to SLC. We ended up arriving about 7:33 and started our interview at around 7:40. The officer interviewing us was nice but she seemed very stern pretty much a nice lady that you don't want to get on her bad side. She asked me what my birthday was and then Naoko's and then she asked Naoko a bunch of the same type of questions and then asked how we met. After that she asked the usual, "are you a terrorist", type questions and then looked at a couple thing we brought to prove our co-habitation. We signed a paper saying we knew that this temporary green card would expire in 2 years and we were done. We were in the car driving away just before 8 am.
We want to thank mom and dad for all their help with this tedious application process and those of you that supported us. It certainly is a weight off our shoulders. God bless America!

Howie stylin' ? yikes

Well I've avoided it as much as possible but she found this at the thrift store and now Howie has his first outfit. Naoko's excuse is that she worries how cold he is and this is for his warmth but that excuse won't fly when she wants to put t-shirts or whatever else a dog could possibly fashion. (He looks way cute though...naoko).
Whenever she puts it on him he tries to naw at it and isn't quite sure why he has been wrapped up. At least though when Naoko wears her ugg boots they can match and no one can say they don't accessorize well.




P.S. Sorry folks we don't have any kids so you are gonna have to put up with posts about our dog Howie. So deal with it ;)

Stop the snow, Stop the snow, Stop the snow

The snow was lovely as it fell the first couple of nights. The snow is still lovely to look at and enjoy.... however sometimes the snow isn't good for the roads.
We went over to Hazen and Annette's place to watch some of the BYU game (go cougars), and then we headed over to their ward christmas party. First off on the way to their house we had to drive up a small slope, and there were people crossing the road so we had to idle up a slippery slope and we barely had enough traction to get up the hill. Then on the way to their church I fishtailed a bit and slid trying to turn left. Worst of it came on the way home from there, we were driving down a different hill (which wasn't even super steep ) going very slow aware that the roads were bad. I was tapping the brakes with little to no success and then we started to fishtail pretty bad, finally I gave up trying to stay straight and let myself flip around a doing a complete 180. We ended up slamming into the sidewalk just missing the car in front of us. The winters are long after all.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!!

Sweet, white, beautiful snow is falling as a nice way to top off an eventful week for us. This picture is just as it was getting started its already quite a bit deeper than this. It is actually a bit disappointing it took til almost December before we got any real snow.

Up until Monday night last week it was really good weather. Of course it was from Tuesday on that we wanted the weather to be decent. On Tuesday my friend Stephen Barsh got married. It was freezing as we sat there waiting for them to come out. But we managed to kill that time by practicing for the pictures and admiring the workmanship on the doors.

After enjoying a Ｔhanksgiving feast at Aunt Kathy's place Hazen and I battled the elements to win a chance at getting a great deal on our new 42" TV. (Read the nitty gritty here!)

Trying to enjoy blogging

So I've been playing around with this blog and am trying a lot of new things so I would love to get some feedback on some of the elements I add. Just comment on this post if you do have feedback. I can't seem to find the look and/or layout that I like so get used to things changing and moving around. thanks for your patience.

Some kind of omen??

So we go out for a walk with Howie and as we stroll through the park a very peculiar thing happened. We were chatting it up and right as I look over at Naoko and she over at me something plops down on my shoulder.... Yep you got it, bird poop! Naoko and I have personally never seen a live pooping let alone anyone who has taken a hit, so this was a bit of a shocker to say the least.
I haven't decided if this is a sign of bad things happening or if I should be grateful it didn't land an inch or so to my right making a direct hit on my head. What ever the "omen" may be I'll just have to make sure not to look up when walking through the park.

The Halloween Post

This is Naoko and I in our halloween costumes. I was some sort of mad scientist and Naoko was some sort of Native American. It was last minute so what can you do.

Naoko & Andrew & Howie

This is us on our 6 month anniversary











This is howie enjoying a car ride

The New Blogging businesss

Time to get into the new age of technology I suppose. So here we go, a blog to keep people up to date with out making an effort to actually contact them... great isn't it. Pay close attention or you might miss some sort of exciting event in our lives.