Blackfoot.

YYYEEEAAAUUUHHH!!! We have arrived. We are in Blackfoot at this exact moment. Well, we've been here for a few days.... But we are loving it! I know that I have no pictures up, but I will soon. Well, I will when there is something to take a picture of. Sadly, there is no snow yet... Don't worry, I'm upset as well. It's 12 degrees and there is no snow? Useless cold... Anyways, I just wanted to update this crap and tell everyone that was wondering if we got up here safely... We did! More updates to come.

And pictures of course.

Something interesting to blog about.

That's right my friends. I have found something relatively interesting to blog about.

I would like to share with everyone why it is wonderful to be married to an engineer.

When we were first married, Matt got a job a Long Building Technologies. When he was there, he ran across a bunch of office supplies that were getting ready to be thrown out. I stress the "getting ready to" so that you don't think that he's a dumpster diver. I mean, the guy's HECKA resourceful, but come one. Give him a little credit. So anyways... He saw that there was a paper shredder in there, and though to himself... I'm going to fix that. So he took that broken shredder home. He sat and the kitchen table with a cap full of vegetable oil, and maybe an hour later, he was shredding some of our old documents. Yeah, he was pretty proud of that.

Next, when my great-grandmother died, she gave me her old OLD piano. This thing is from the mid 20's probably at the latest. So one night, at around 11 or so, Matt decided to start playing the piano. It wasn't some dainty David Lanz shiz or anything. This was like Phantom of the opera (DOOOOOOM DOM DOM DOM DOM DOOOM) status. So I told him to use the soft pedal cause we have 3 neighbors connected to our townhouse. And 2 of them are old. And I didn't want to deal with the broom stick against the wall episode. He told me that it didn't work. I was like, "well crap" and that was the end of that. But he insisted on pulling the piano out from against the wall, taking off the back of it and tinkering with it. In a matter of minutes, he fixed the soft pedal, and it still works like a charm. Amazing. He didn't think it was a big deal. Whatever.

THEN, yesterday afternoon, we got home from church and our house was freezing. He felt the air vent and realized that it was blowing out cold air. Obviously he wasn't having any of that, so he went into our tiny closet, pulled out his tools and went to town on the furnace. I was in the kitchen making dinner, so I couldn't tell what he was doing. He started to pull out all kinds of crap and laid it on the living room floor. I wasn't about to get into the infamous conversation that starts with, "What the hell are you doing?" So I let him continue. I wasn't about to lose faith yet. Well, he was working away, and at one point I heard the vacuum turn on... Hmmmm. Well, a few minutes later he told me to stand under the vent and check to see if there was any warm air coming out of it. He flipped the switch and voila! Heat.

He's going to save us a lot of money one day. Maybe he already has.

I love him. :)

Other than that, most of you know that Matt and I are moving to Blackfoot, Idaho in 2 weeks. We're doing as little as possible to get ready for that. Hahaha. I don't mean that we are terribly lazy. I just mean that the company that he is going to be working for is paying for people to come into our house and pack our shiz up. Yep. I don't have to wrap even a single dish. Hallelujah.

So besides that, work, finals, Young Women/Young Men and getting ready for Christmas, we have nothing to do.

I have no children, therefore, I haven't anything really that sweet or funny or cute to blog about. So here's another little blurb from the mind of my own.


I have had an epiphany. It was actually not an epiphany at all. Just realizing that I needed to take the advice that I have been hearing my entire life.

GOALS.

I believe that it is important to set goals. Whether you are a newlywed that is going to school, or a full time mommy, or a seasoned woman, it is important to our well-being to set goals and feel accomplished. Here are a few goals that I have set:

• Finish Personal Progress as a leader.
  
• Get my art into a gallery before I die.


• Get an ART Degree.
  
• Run a half marathon (a full blown marathon is really a little much. Especially for my tiny leg. The key is something that is within reach! :))


• Go to the gym at least 2 times a week.


• Use more coupons at the store.
  
• Find a family name that I can take to the Temple.


• Finish the blanket that I started before I was married.


• Finally get the water storage the Bishop has been telling us to get
  
• DO MY VISITING TEACHING before the last two days of the month.

My list can go on and on, but what I think is important is to feel accomplished. It will definitely boost our self esteem, and become better examples.

Be Thou and Example of the Believers

This is an amazing talk that touches on goal setting.

Anyways, that's what is on the mind today. I'm excited to get together with the sweet young women tonight and help them work on goals that they have set. :)

I haven't got anything fun to write about today. I don't mind if most of you will now close your browser and get on with life. I am just at work with a lot of time, and have a lot of things on my mind.

For all of you friends out there, here's the scoop on my and Matt's life. Bullet style (with expansion, when necessary)

• We are both in school and are working for the University. Matt teaches a couple of calculus corses and I do a lot of the design work (invitations, banners, flyers, websites) for the College of Engineering.
• We LOVE our callings. Matt is the Deacon's Advisor and I am the 2nd Counselor in the YW Presidency. We love working with the youth! It's very rewarding seeing their testimonies grow at such a young age.
• We are still house hunting. Less than three months. Then I will be freezing my lop-sided A off. But, alas, we are still very excited to start a new adventure together. And I'm excited to have a garden and a clothes line. :)
• UUhhh... I (Laura) am currently in the process of applying and transferring to ISU (Idaho State University) and I absolutely HATE the process. It's the transcripts. That's the downer. I went to 3 Colleges here in Las Vegas. I know, stupid. But when you gotta pay some bills, you have to find the schedule that fits with your STUPID work schedule. So anyways. Now I've gotta get the transcripts. Egh.

So those are the larger bullet points in our life... Hopefully I will be better and taking pictures, cataloging the fun moments of life, and sharing them with you all. Because our lives are SOOOO exciting... :)

P.S. I still have the Washington D.C. trip blog pending :) Thank you for your patience.

July-August

Once again, I am sure there is a whole ton of schtuff we’ve been up to that I need to blog about, that I have yet to.... 

So this one will be a catch up post. (With Pictures... I know that’s the reason you’re looking at this blog right now anyways...)

So where to start.

Matt returned back from his boys weekend with my brothers, and I survived. :) He had a great time, although I don’t think I have any pictures for y’all.

June and July passed us by fairly quickly. We both have jobs. Matt is doing research work at the University and I am working in the dean’s office of the college of engineering at the University. I do a lot of design work and office work. Because I have been in front of a computer most of the day for the past few months, I have come to become obsessed with FARMVILLE of facebook.

My brother in law introduced me to this game, and if you’re not quite sure what it is, I hesitantly recommend you to check it out, for fear of you falling into the same obsessive excitement that I have. ANYWAYS... It has been awesome because Matt and I have been able to go to work everyday, and come home everyday together. He even comes over to the college of engineering for lunch everyday.

At the beginning of August, Matt and I finally started to sleep upstairs again. :) For those of you who have no idea why we wouldn’t be sleeping upstairs, here’s the quick scoop. Our air conditioning system in our house is lame. We have tiled floors downstairs and carpeted floors upstairs. Thus, in Vegas, HOT upstairs, COOLER (I hesitate to say cold) downstairs. The sensor for the AC is downstairs, where it stays generally cool. Well, the AC thinks it is cool everywhere in the house, so it will shut off often, even though it’s still 100° F upstairs. During the HOT summer months, unless we had the AC set to 60° F, we can’t bear the heat. So we have been camping out downstairs for the summer. Since  school is starting up again, we don’t want to have the mess and clutter we have downstairs from sleeping there. So we turn on a lot of fans, and sleep with no covers. We hope it’s going to start cooling down.

We also went hiking this past month. The day started out with Matt taking me into Boulder City where we had breakfast at the cutest, most fun diner called the Coffee Cup. It was featured on the Food Network’s, “Guy’s Diners, Drive-In’s and Dives”. I haven’t seen the episode, but I thought that was a fun little factoid. After breakfast, we walked down the street for a little antique shopping. From there, we headed to Lake Mead, because the gentleman that owned the diner recommended that we take the “Abandoned Railroad Hike”, near the lake. We tinkered around in the visitor’s center, and then got a map, and started out on the hike. It was really hot, but we had a good time reading all about the building of the dam, and whatnot. We went through 5 old tunnels that the train would pass through to get to the dam to deliver aggregate and all that good dam-building schtuff.

 After 4 miles of hiking, we got back to the truck, and went over to the dam, to check out the bridge (I had never seen it). It was really neat, although I don’t think I’m going to want to drive over it once it’s finished. A little high and skinny if you ask me.

So that’s really what we’ve been up to lately. The next post is pretty substantial. :)

Alone........ :(

So Matt, my brother Robert, and Brother in Law, Waddy all left town this afternoon for a "boys weekend" in California. This is only the second time that we've been apart at night since we've been married. I know that I should be out all night long partying it up with my girls, but I've got two midterms and quizzes next week. One of the quizzes is over a book that I have yet to read. That, along with preparing my lesson for Sunday will prove to keep me pretty busy, and keep my mind off the fact that my man is gone... :( I'm a big baby. I know. I don't mind if you think it, either.

I'm about to freak out.

For the past 4 days, my upper left eyelid has been twitching non-stop. I have had an eye twitch before, but none that have lasted THIS long... Has anyone else ever had this happen to them?? And what can I do about it?? And please DO NOT tell me it's stress, or anything like that. For those that know me know that I have NOTHING to stress about... No kids, no debt, no nothin...

Update... :)

So like always, it's been quite sometime since I've blogged... But I've an excuse this time!! We have been busy. Seriously though... Matt took me to Disneyland for my birthday!! :) Happiest freaking place EVER! And I won't tell about all the fun stories, cause the reason people even check blogs is to see pictures.. (Guilty) So... Here they are, with minimal commentary...

This was the best that we could do... There was no one around to take it for us...

So we rode some super sweet, too slow, Matt going the wrong way on the track and screwing everyone up as well as pissing every parent off bumper cars... :)

I'm pretty upset that I was the only idiot on the whole freaking raft that got smashed by this tidal wave of water, while the Canadians across from me laughed at me and tried to make light of a terrible situation. I wanted to recklessly unbuckle my safety strap and punch them in their freaking tourist faces..................

And we are stuffing our faces with the famous chowder and gumbo in the bread bowls. Which were the bomb. BUT there were only 8 tables that sat 4, snuggly, in the vicinity, so I pretty much had to beat off any little families, and mothers with strollers to get us a seat. It got pretty crazy.

The calm before the storm... I don't know why we decided to do this one again. Although, THIS time, and dare I say fortunately, a precious little Asian family in the raft with us got the brunt of the impact. But I had no sympathy for them. I was there, YESTERSDAY.

And we rode some freaking sweet freaking sweet Tower of Terror, when I'm convinced Matt shat himself cause he didn't know what to expect. And obviously, I wouldn't warn him of anything...

Double fisting it... Fatty turkey leg and chimichanga. I don't regret that for a minute.

Matt wanted to be a part of the turkey leg festivities...

And here's Matt buying us our first, ceremonial churro of the vacation...

And again we plaved the "Laura is the only one that's allowed to get wet on these freaking rides that we are stupid enough to ride AT NIGHT, IN THE DARK, WHEN IT'S COLD OUTSIDE!!!

We got on the tea cups, knowing very well that we would regret it immediately. Also, we told ourselves that we wouldn't spin the wheel, which failed as well. But we got the best color. So I guess all in all it made that venture worth it. Kind of....

And we finally stuffed our faces again...

And finally, Matt met his all time childhood hero and personal mentor... The M-Mizzle.

Going Private...

Hey guys in a few days, I'm going to be making my blog private to those I personally know, and that are still interested in reading my blog. If you want to still read up on what Matt and I are up to, please post a comment to this post with your email address, or shoot me an email (cutler678@gmail.com)... I appreciate it guys... I know this is kinda inconvenient, but it's getting scary out there, and I'd rather our lives be a little more protected, and still allow our awesome friends to know what's going on in our lives.

Thanks!

Seriously, so blessed...

The lovely Stacie Morris in my ward told me about this blog.

www.seriouslysoblessed.blogspot.com

HILARIOUS. It pokes fun at the Mormon culture, that flourishes in UTAH.

If you want to read it, you should start at the beginning. You will not be disappointed.

What might be in store for the Cutlers!

Well, a few weeks ago Matt went to a career fair at UNLV to check out some possible employers when he graduates. (December 2009). He found a company called Bettis Lab. It's a nuclear engineering lab in none other than the FABULOUS IDAHO! He picked up some information from them and also left his resume. They were pretty impressed and he had to fill out at LEAST 30 pages of questions about his life. It's a security clearance thing. Well, he had to do this, and then they could officially offer him a job. Well, it took about a week and a half (Matt thought it would take them months) and he got a call this morning while we were eating our very nutritious breakfast. It was Bettis Lab calling him to OFFICIALLY offer him a job for when he would graduate. We are so excited that come December, we might be moving up to BLACKFOOT, IDAHO, home of the Eastern Idaho State Fair!

I was totally sold on this idea when Matt brought home the BOOK of papers he had to fill out. He told me that they will fly him up there to check out the lab and see what there is to see up there. If he accepts the job offer, they will fly Matt and I up there for a week to look at houses. When that's all said and done, they are going to pay for professional movers to pack up all my crap, and MOVE it up to Idaho!! Now that's what I'm talking about. I hate moving. EGH.....

So now we've spent the last hour (before class) looking for houses in Blackfoot. We found some potential winners. One that's 5 bedrooms on 1.75 acres with an ORCHARD! I'm totally sold. We'll see how stuff goes...

I really just can't wait to get out of Vegas. I mean look at this waterfall!!! It's called Mesa Falls, and when Matt took me up to Idaho for the first time, he brought me here. It's like an hour outside of Blackfoot. I'd say it's a much better view than Lake Mead. Take a look at all that moss......

Valentine's Dizzay.

Well, since I know all about everyone else's V-Days, I thought I'd share with you all mine. It actually started the day before. I went to get my car smogged then to the DMV so I could finally get my car registered under my name. That was delightful. I waited only about 10 minutes in the "Wait her to get a number so you can wait some more" line. Then I waited about a half hour to be seen. Most of the DMV employees that I have come in contact with have just been in bad moods. I don't think any of them like their jobs. But the sweet little foreign lady I got was so nice. She laid out all of the license plates so I could PICK ONE! ;) None of them were really of any significance, so I just picked a random one. I did however, thank her for letting me pick. And she says, ina delightfully cute accent, "It's no problem. You smile for me, and it don't cost me a thing". Oh I loved her.

Then I went to the mall to get Matt's V-Day gift...... ;) And stopped in JCPenny to see if they had any good purses on sale, and they did! I bought an awesome cerulean- blue with a hint of green purse. It's kind of aqua-y but more blue and it's BRIGHT!!! Anyways, that was my Valentine's gift to myself. So that's awesome.

So I get home later that night, and Matt says I have to go upstairs for a while while he sets something up down stairs, for the next day (V-Day). So he's doing whatever downstairs while I'm reading upstairs. He finally comes upstairs and wraps his bathrobe around my head and face. I don't know why he didn't just use a shirt, but I guess it got the job done. He led me downstairs and sat me on a chair. He took the bathrobe off of my head and I was sitting right by the piano. I though I knew what would be coming next because one year ago that day (Feb 13) he proposed to me by singing and playing the song that he wrote for me. So I sat down and immediately started to tear up beacuse I could see how nervous he was. Now, remember that Matt is now the loudest singer so when he sang to me that night I couldn't hear all of the words, but this time I did. The song was sooooo personal and beautiful and meaningful to me that I was having a hard time composing myself the whole time. But then he took my wedding ring from me (and he took his off too, to make it more realistic I guess) and proposed to me all over again. I was crying again, of course. Then he lifted me out of the chair and said, "Now, this isn't quite right". He wrapped the bathrobe around my head again and he scooted me back a little bit until my legs were hitting something that felt a lot like a double papasan chair. He sat me down and it was!!! He had this chair hidden in our house for 2 days, and I didn't know it. He still won't tell me where it was he had it, stinker. But we sat there on that chair for a while. Now the story behind that chair is this...

We wanted a cool papasan chair to match our tropical theme in our living room. The Cunninghams in our ward told us there were some at Pier 1, so we went over there about 2 months ago to check it out. Well, there was a DOUBLE PAPASAN there and it was the shiz. It was kind of expensive so we decided to think about it. For two months, I would make little comments about how I wish we had that chair. I figured that we just would never get it so I dropped it, but then he surprised me with it!!! He is the BEST HUSBAND IN THE WORLD!!

Then the next day we slept in, hung out, went to the Temple, visited my new little niece, and went grocery shopping (our favorite thing in the whole worl.d Fresh N Easy is our favorite place to be). We went home and took a nap on our neat-o chair. Then we went to Cugino's (Our unofficial first date) for dinner and then went to the UNLV vs Colorado State game where WE WON!!!!

Anyways, that was my awesome first V-Day with an incredible husband... ;)

Charging...

I am sitting in the UNLV library, waiting for class to start. I want my iPod to charge as much as it can so I can listen to Simon & Garfunkel of the Beatles as I am drawing... So I might get off and running, but then come to a complete stop, mid thought, much like my last entry did because I have to race across campus to draw. ;) So I had a photography assignment this weekend. We were to come to the library and find two books of photographers that we like. We have to talk about how interesting their work is and how we are going to incorporate their style into our work... Well, I found that the photography section is on the fifth floor of the Library, so my limpy butt took the elevator. And no, I don't feel bad. Elevators were partly made for tards like me. So I found the section and realized that photography to some is just porn. The books are really old and don't have covers with pictures on them, so naturally, you have to flip open the book and see the work that that photographer does. Well, apparently homosexuality is the hot topic for photographers. I was mortified when 4 SHELVES were filled with this crap. I don't know why people think that's art. I think it's gross. Even if it were heterosexual porn, it is just obscene and offensive. But I managed to find the nature and food photography section. It was sooooo fun after that. But anyways, I thought since my iPod is still charging, and I had a few minutes before class, I would rant about the sucky "artists" in the world now. I love art, and am so excited that it's my major, but I don't understand why it's an excuse for some to destroy morality. Egh.

On a lighter note, school is going to be long and awesome today, and I'm going to finish it off by working my butt off at the gym.

School Days... School Days...

Well, I haven't blogged since Christmas, but I'm sure you are all tired of reading Christmas blogs, so I will just say Christmas was the BOMB. It was wonderful to be with family and take a break from life for a while. After the BIG DAY, we went up to the house my parents have in New Harmony, Utah. We played in the snow, built stuff with legos, spent and ENTIRE DAY (I kid you not) down in the basement, playing Mario 64. By the way, Matt beat the game a few days later, and is still recovering from it.

So we got back and had a whole 2 weeks of no work and no school. So what do we do? We take advantage of it. We stayed up til at least 3 AM each night(/morning?) And never saw the light of day before 10:30 AM. Needless to say, we felt like absolute bums after that. So we quit.

School has started. It's my first time back in over a year. But my classes are AWESOME. I am majoring in Graphic Design. So I have all art classes. They are so fun. It's really not like school at all. I get to take pictures, develop them on my own, draw, paint, draw some more, sculpt, draw, bend things out of metal, and NEVER READ A BOOK!!! Not that I don't like to read.... I am really a reading fanatic. But textbooks? No one learned anything from one of those.......