December 2010 & January 2011- Anniversary & Disneyland

-Written by Jake-

I can’t believe that I have been a part of Kristina’s wonderful family for more than a year now!  Our 1^st wedding Anniversary was on the 11^th of December and we look forward to many, many more.  I can definitely say it has been the best year of my life.

<Kristina’s insert: Here’s how our anniversary went down.  On the 10^th (day before our anniversary) we went to Jake’s company dinner at Hamilton’s.  On the way home I realized that we needed to go get Jake’s car from my parent’s house.  I kept telling him that we should be driving to my parents’ house and not away from it.  I was getting a little frustrated that he wasn’t turning around because it would just be a waste of gas to go get it another time.  Finally, he “heeded” my promptings and got in the left-hand turning lane.  Then I started feeling bad for being so adamant about getting his car.  While I was expressing that we really didn’t have to go and get the car he turned the car in to a driveway.  Within 10 seconds I thought all of the following: Oh, he must be turning back around now and we really aren’t going to go get the car.  Then he kept driving in to this drive way.  Oh my, it is the Anniversary Inn.  Oh, oh, oh!  I get it!  It was all very surreal and such a fun surprise.  So, turns out he had packed me a suitcase and we were going to stay in the Swiss Family Robinson themed room that night.  So we went inside.  The bed was up a story in the top of a fake tree.  There were starry lights that shined through the ceiling in the top of the tree, simulating sleeping under the stars.  There was a huge fish tank in the rock wall on the first level and bamboo furniture, leaves and branches everywhere, and cheesecake in the mini fridge. It was so cute.  What made it even cuter was what was on the table.  Jake bought me a rose (just 1 symbolizing 1 year of marriage), and he had a nativity set up.  I am addicted to collecting nativities and so he had bought me a really neat wooden one.  Also, he got me a funny card and inside was another surprise- a gift card to go buy some new jeans.  I had been wanting new jeans for sooooo long, and so he was genius and got me a gift card for someJ   So,  after all this we decided to go rent a movie.  We should have rented something like Tarzan, but we must not have been thinking correctly.  So, being Christmas time we rented Christmas with the Kranks, plus it was one of the only clean movies we could find.  It’s so hard to find a good, clean movie these days!  It was a pretty good show.  The next morning breakfast was delivered to our door and we ate it while watching the Heisman trophy announcement.  Well, the fun didn’t stop there.  We ran home to change, and then went to the VoiceMale Christmas Concert.  After that we went out to dinner, and then to the Aggie game.  It was such a great anniversary, mainly because I have the best husband ever!>

<Jake again> The holidays came and went so quickly and we loved being around family… LOTS of family.  Almost our entire break was spent running back and forth between Mortensons, Roskelleys, and Petersons, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. 

I worked during finals week and then took the holidays off in preparation for my accounting internship (which I love!), and Kristina worked 4 hours each morning, Monday-Friday, so we had lots of time to enjoy plenty of fun holiday activities including; Jazz games, company parties, the Motab Christmas Concert, sleepovers with the Roskelley kids, white elephant parties, Aggie basketball games, dinners and brunches, College Football bowl games, family Christmas traditions, and DISNEYLAND!

Two days after Christmas we headed to Anaheim with the Petersons for a quick three-day visit to sunny California.  Right after landing in Long Beach, we rented a car and drove straight to the Los Angeles temple.  Bill, Angie, Tina, and I did a session while Meghan and Nichole did baptisms and took pictures outside.  It is a gorgeous and HUGE temple and brings our total to 11.  We were grateful to get our vacation started in such a fun way.  After the temple we drove down to Newport Beach to visit my grandparents.  We don’t get to see them much, but they are great people and are always a riot and a joy to be around.

The next two days were spent in the happiest place on earth, Disneyland!  We loved experiencing all of the amazing Christmas decorations, music, smells, and rides.  They even changed the Haunted Mansion and It’s a Small World to be completely Christmas/Nightmare before Christmas rides.  It was magical.  The new World of Color show at California Adventure was quite magical as well.  We recommend it to anyone planning a Disney vacation anytime soon.

Now that the break is over, we have started real life again.  Kristina is busy plucking away at her last semester in college, while continuing to work 20 hours a week at JJ Cole.  We are excited/ nervous to see if she will get a full-time offer there, or if she will bless another company with her wicked skills.  I am now working 50-60 hours a week at my internship at Jones Simkins and I love it!  It is great to have a small break from school and experience the working man’s life.  I am glad to know that I will love to work, no matter where it ends up being.

We hope you all have a very happy February and a romantic Valentine’s Day!

Peterson Christmas Letter, 2010

-THE PETERSONS-                                  

How fun it’s been reviewing my photos to refresh my memory of the events of the past year.  Jake and I have now been married for 53 weeks.  Yes, we celebrated our first year anniversary last week!  We’re so grateful for all the support we received from everyone who came to our wedding, sent cards, presents, called us on the phone, etc.  Thank you.  Our wedding day was more incredible than we could have ever imagined.  We often joke that we want to go back and do it all over againJ  We were privileged to gallivant to Manhattan and Palmyra, New York for our honeymoon.  We enjoyed the hustle and bustle of Manhattan at Christmas and then ended off the trip with the calm and sacred presence that is all about the LDS Church historical sites in Palmyra. 

Over spring break we took a trip to San Diego.  We spent most of the time visiting many of the families from Jake’s mission.  Their company was great and their cooking incredible!  We stuck pretty close to home with our other traveling ventures.  We treated ourselves to a couple days in St. George, including a day at Zions’ Park, as we had a weekend break between spring finals and the beginning of our summer semester.  We enjoyed many outings to Bear Lake with the Roskelleys and the Petersons during the summer, and a fall-break trip to Park City with the Petersons.  Through our traveling, we make an effort to do a session in a temple we haven’t been to before.  We call it “temple collecting.”  This past year we collected 10 different temples!

Now for the low down on our day-to-day lives.  Jake and I have finished most of our general business education classes.  Sadly that means that we no longer have classes together.  Jake is heavily into his accounting major, and I into my marketing major.  We both have one semester left in our undergraduate education.  In July, I started working at an internship that I will stay at through the end of the school year (working part-time).  I am doing marketing and public relations work for JJ Cole Collections- a baby products company.  Jake recently was accepted into a full-time internship program at Jones Simkins Accounting Firm.  He will be taking next semester off of school and working 40-60 hours a week doing taxes.  I am scheduled to graduate this May and he will graduate next December.  My plan is to hopefully find someplace that will take me on full time (fingers crossed) and Jake will likely continue on to get a Masters in Accounting from Utah State. 

We keep busy with church callings and participation in extracurricular activities at USU. Ironically enough, after being married for one week, we were called to be the Marriage and Family Relations Sunday School teachers in our ward. Due to a ward split, we have also been able to serve in a variety of other callings, including the Young Men, Young Women, Relief Society, and Elders Quorum. Recently, Jake became a member of Beta Alpha Psi, a really great accounting society/club. This year, I have continued to be involved with the University Ambassadors. We have also stayed busy serving as VPs over Huntsman Scholar Committees and being members of the Business School Ambassadors program. 

However, our favorite thing to do remains spending time with both of our families.  We love their enthusiasm and cheerfulness and love being involved in their lives.

We wish you a joyful Christmas season filled with family, friends, and the CHRISTmas spirit.

Love, Kristina & Jake Peterson

August 2010- Summer Continues

August surely flew by too quickly, and what a fun month it was!  Jake finally ended his summer classes on the sixth; he was quite happy about that.  We went out to Mandarin Garden in celebration.  The next evening we enjoyed doing Initiatories for my first time as proxy work, then had a nice dinner with the Peterson’s at Elements, followed by The Sound of Music at the Ellen Eccles.  I’d only seen it previously as a movie, but it is definitely one of my favorite musicals now.

The following day Jake and I both left for Girls camp.  Jake was a priesthood representative for two of the days, while I stayed all four as my last responsibility in YW prior to the ward split.  The camp went very well and was lots of fun!  It was very different from the previous camps I had been to as a girl and not a leader.  The leaders at this camp outnumbered the girls.  We had two camp leaders, myself, and the two priesthood holders, and just four girls!  We stayed at a nice camp just an hour away, in Idaho.  We did the usual certification, crafts, devotionals, endless games, s’mores, testimony meeting, and hiked Minnetonka Cave.  I arrived back on the 13^th.  Jake and I recapped about the experience over Olive Garden’s delicious soup, salad, and breadsticks.  He then went to work, while I met my parents at the Cache County Fair and then went over to visit the fun Nyman family at grandma & grandpa’s!  It was a lot of fun to visit with them and see Kelly’s cute little baby bumpJ! 

The following day we went and played with the Roskelley’s on Bear Lake’s North Beach.  I don’t think I’d ever seen the beach so packed- I guess everyone was trying to squeeze in the fun the last free weekend before school started!  We had lots of fun playing sand volleyball and wave running.  The next day Scott was ordained a Teacher.  It was a very nice ordination followed by a yummy dinner with both grandparents.  On Monday, we met up with the Peterson’s and some other families for their annual boat-racing event!  We ate a yummy potluck dinner and then raced our homemade boats down the river running behind Logan High.  Some of the interesting items on these boats were: a Barbie, Mannequin Head, and a rubber ducky!  The boats were made out of anything and everything, from a plastic diaper tub, a baking tray, to a milk carton.  I’m not sure there was ever an official winner, but we sure had fun racing! 

On the 19^th we enjoyed a fun night out!  We “collected” our 10^th temple- the Bountiful Temple!  It is now one of my favorite temples; it is very gorgeous, especially the Celestial room!  We then had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.  We went in reminiscence of my birthday dinner back in March.  For my birthday, we had gone to the Jordan River temple and then out to the Cheesecake Factory where Jake had presented me with two tickets to Lion King the musical for August!  So, needless to say, we then went to the musical following our dinner.  The costumes were absolutely incredible; they blew me away!  What a great, uplifting musical!

We enjoyed a fun surprise dinner for my uncle Kevin on the 20^th as well as attending Jake’s five-year class reunion at Adam’s park.  We had a great morning the following day, going horseback riding with grandpa Neal! Grandpa was great to teach us all about how to get the horses ready.  We went on a pretty trail up past Camp Lomia in Logan canyon. We had an enjoyable time on Chip and Lobo! 

On the 24^th, I had the fun opportunity to go to a cooking class at Hamilton’s with Jake’s mom and grandma.  We were instructed on how to make about 6 different items covering appetizers, entrees, and dessert.  We were given the recipes to each and were even able to eat each item as well! Yum, Yum!  The next day was our 1 year engagement anniversary.  We had exchanged presents a few days prior to our anniversary, because on the day of I worked during the morning and at noon we left for my yearly USU Ambassador retreat.  Since we celebrated our anniversary ahead of time, I was very unsuspecting when I showed up to work and found a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses and a Symphony candy bar on my desk!  It was a lovely surprise!  As for the retreat… we started it off with sandwiches at First Dam, and then played group games on the beach at Bear Lake, enjoyed Café Sabor for dinner, followed by some more fun games.  Spouses headed home later that evening as the next day was just filled with going over our responsibilities and the year overview. 

On Friday of that week, we went to the Logan High Football game to watch Heather dance at half time as part of the Hi-lo mini-clinic.  She was very cute out there “busting a move!”  The game was also very exhilarating.  Logan High won in double over time.  That weekend, I also (FINALLY) finished my Levi quilt I had been working on for eternity.  Now I have that checked off my bucket list and won’t ever have to do another one (right)?  For some reason, I’m sure I’ll get sucked back into it again!  It is fun to see the finished product, though! To make the most of our siblings last bits of “freedom!” we had a fun night with them the night before their school started.  We went mini golfing and then had slushies afterward.

School is back in session and we feel as busy as ever… just as most of you!  Happy September!                                     Love, Kristina & Jake

*I have included a poem that Jake wrote in his spare time to express enthusiasm for his favorite time of year… Autumn!
                                                                              ACT II

The summer cast is at the curtain,
Here comes the final bow.
With the sunburns a hurtin’.
The memories certain,
It’s time they leave us now.

The boats and the cabins,
The wild chuck wagons,
Now seem so long in the past.
The grills and the kites,
The late starry nights,
They came and they left so fast.

Although it seems sad,
It’s not all that bad.
Don’t cry or shed a tear.
The curtain once closed,
Now is exposed.
The autumn and winter casts are here.

From the leaves that fall,
The heroic football,
To the Christmas lights so bright.
The school year has come,
Now no more hum drum.
I’m thinking it will be all right.