Offroading - Green Sands Beach

So, Andy decided to upgrade to a jeep so we could see the areas that the guides said only 4-wheel drive cars could go. Anyway, on the first day, we didn't do anything that needed the 4-wheel drive. The next day, Andy was obsessed about wanting to go offroading so that he would feel that paying for the upgrade would be worth it. Anyway, after speaking with my brother Aaron, we figured out how to use the 4 wheel drive. As we were driving back to Kona, Andy saw several areas on the side of the road that would lead into the desert area....all of a sudden, he slows down and says "I want to do something." Next thing I know we are driving off the freeway into the area on the side of the road. Andy shouts in glee "Yeah! Offroading!!!" I just busted out in laughter. So, knowing that he loved to off-road, I told him we should make the drive down to green sands beach....we weren't going to at first because it would have been a long drive but it ended up being tons of fun! We got down to the area called south point...we were still kind of disappointed because it didn't seem like we really did any off roading. Anyway, we learned that the beach was further in...once we started in, Andy was very excited! It was my first time and I thought it was tons of fun. :) Also, 25 minutes of driving was a lot better than 1 1/2 hour hike. We were both glad that we made the trip! I will also need to make a mental note to tell Aaron to be careful of what he introduces Andy too. :) j/k

Anyway, here are a few pics from that as well....

Volcano

Before meeting up with Andy's parents in Oahu, Andy and I decided to spend two days on the big island. The first day, we spent our time in Hilo to see the volcano. Here are a few pics from that area.

Trip to the ER

Despite being extremely busy (hence the lack in updates on my blog), Andy and I have been looking forward to our trip to Hawaii.  Melanie is graduating on Saturday the 13th and his parents were flying over from Macau so we figured it would be a good family reunion.  Anyway, the day before we were to leave, I got really sick.  Saturday night, my stomach started to not feel well and around 11 pm they turned into really really sharp pains.  Normally, I usually just sleep them off and within a few hours they are gone.  Well...I fell asleep only to wake up every hour or so with really bad stomach pains.  To top it off, everytime I woke up, I was usually in the bathroom.  It definitely was not fun.  Anyway, I thought it would be over by the morning but it wasn't.  So, the same thing continued on.  Finally, about 10 hours later, Andy called the nurse line to speak with a nurse.  She asked me a few questions and said it may be good to head to the ER.  She wasn't quite sure if it was just the flu since the stomach pains were extremely bad.  She was actually more concnerned about it possibly being a kidney stone, or something wrong with my galbladder. Anyway, I was sure the pains would go away soon and I hadn't thrown up for a while...so I decided to sleep it out.  Then I woke up again and the pain was back and I was in the bathroom again.  I decided it would be better to check it out.  So off to the ER we went.  The doctor checked me out and they found that everything was alright and it looked like it was a very bad case of the stomache flu.  Well, by the time I left the ER I was actually feeling okay.  But I still wasn't very much help around the house and ended up sleeping all day while Andy got everything ready for our trip.  I am very grateful for my husband and is hard work.  I am also definitely glad that I was able to recover before our trip.

Life after Leaving Mayo Clinc

I left Mayo Clinic for about a month now. There are so many things that I miss when I worked there. I do believe the patient cares at Mayo are exceptional, and the passion of the employees toward patient are the things that I miss the most. I read this article that summarized what I felt after I left Mayo. I agree that Mayo may pay a little lower; however, the work life-balance and the the holidays are definitely good when one wants to enjoy family life. I don't mind one day that I will go back to work for Mayo.

Anyway, I decided to take this challenge to leave Mayo to explore the business world. During this time, I often question myself about my decision; often, I did feel regret for a little bit. Nevertheless, thank you for my wife for her support and understanding, especially she has been going through a tough time lately too. Lately, all the changes and trials happen in our lives draw us closer to God. We once again remind ourselves the principles of humble and faith. We both are grateful to have the gospel in our lives, and I am especially grateful for my wife in my life.

Yellowstone National Park

So....As you may have noticed, Andy has been doing much of the posting lately. You can say he has "hijacked" my blog. :) Anyway, I am glad he has posted some updates on what we have been doing because I have been very busy. Anyway, here are some pics from our trip to Yellowstone National Park. It was a crazy trip but I had tons of fun! We never expected to drive there anytime soon because it is like an 18 hour drive. However, Andy's co-worker Praveen said that him and his wife were going during Labor Day weekend so Andy decided we would go along. I have never been to Yellowstone before so I was way excited! We left Friday night and drove half-way. The next morning, Andy and I went to visit Mount Rushmore. It was pretty neat and much bigger than I thought it would be. Then we drove the rest of the way to Yellowstone. We saw different types of animals and the scenery was beautiful. The only thing we didn't get to see was a bear. Oh well...we still enjoyed ourselves and the weather was actually pretty nice. Anyway, here are some pics from our trip.

Why should we learn from Warren Buffert ?

Warren Buffet has always been the person whom people look up to when it comes to stock selections. Back in the 1980s, the purchase of the Coca-cola, Wells Fargo, and the American Express proved that he had a sixth sense in choosing stocks. In the last two years, Warren Buffet again proved that his sharp instinct in investment. I still remembered that he sold off all his stakes in China Oil in the peak of year 2007. Then, many people questioned about his action and mocked at him. As the history proved that he was doing the right thing, the stock price of China Oil has dropped significantly since Buffet sold his stakes. Lately, Warren Buffet once again proves himself the unique way in term of investment. With the large amount of cash on hand, he bought many sweet and bargain stocks in Goldman Sachs, GE, Morgan Stanley, and many others. I need to learn from him in my financial investment in the future.

Ready for Great Depression

Tanya and I have been discussing about the rescue plan lately. Although we are not favor for the 700 billion "bail-out" plan, we don't see any other options or measures to prevent this financially disaster happening except to support this plan. Anyway, the House just rejected the plan, and the Dow drops 600 points. So, I guess many American need to be ready for the upcoming job cuts and foreclosures.

Life Update

Usually, Tanya is the one to update about our life in the blog. However, she has been busy with some misc stuff that I don't know what she is doing sometimes.(j/k). So, I decide to help her to update this blog about our lives. Apparently, Tanya's blog has more traffic than my blog. I think people interested about our lives more than my own techie blog.

Both of Tanya's and mine school start in September. Tanya is taking two MBA classes. One is leadership and another one is her MBA core class. I am taking only one quality assurance class for my Master of Software Engineering degree. I hope that I can finish my degree by next June, and Tanya will finish her MBA by the end of next year.

August is a very interesting month. After my mom and brother spent 6 weeks with us for the summer, we were exhaust to entertain them. We thought everything would go back to the normal simple that we used to have. However, things have changed a lot. Apparently, I got couple good job opportunities that extend to me. I took my time and energy to interview couple jobs, and I got couple job offers too. The difficulty part was to decide which jobs that I should take because all of them are pretty good. Finally, we decide that I will take the job at Medtronic located in Minneapolis, and Tanya will still work for Mayo Clinic. Changing job means relocation. We are in the process of finding a home near the Twin cities. At the same time, since we own a townhome, we need to sell our townhome. As everyone knows, the market nowadays is not a good time to sell a property.

Anyway, I think we have a lot of blessings and changes in our lives, especially in the last two months. Tanya and I won 4 free movie tickets, a free chiropractor visit, and an iPod too. We anticipate more changes in the upcoming months. We will keep you guys posted.

Free Debt Tool

I know that Debt is a big problem in US. Especially in the bad economy right now, many people struggle to pay off their debts. I came across an article that talked about an Excel file that can help people to see the different methods to pay off their debt. I think it's pretty cool.

Download the File here

This file contains two worksheets:

1. A debt reduction calculator, which allows you to list your debts, their balances, interest rates, and monthly payments.
2. A payment schedule telling you which bills to pay when.


Thank you for the website Get Rich Slowly for this article.

Financial Planning

After talking about the spending habit, I think it's a good time to talk about saving for retirement. We are not professional financial planner, however, we try to educate ourselves enough to learn the principal of saving. We save 12% of our income toward our 403(b) account, and we will try to max out our Roth IRA contribution limit. Based on our current trend, we should be able to have enough money for our retirement, unless the inflation is more than 10% per year for the next 60 years. Anyway, I found a good quick and easy article to remind some of the basic financial principles.

Quick Retirement Fact

Tool to calculate your current saving goal

Again, the most important thing to reach a financial goal is to develop a saving habit and control spending.

Magic Blanket Challenge

So, a while back, a friend of mine gave a challenge. You can read about the challenge here. She was one of my companions in the mission field and is definitely someone I look up to. She is awesome and a great friend!

Anyway, this post is way overdue. But, one of the things I've accomplished that I'm very proud of is our emergency plan. Our ward has been talking about being prepared for a while and at New Years, when I was home for Christmas, we had put together a 3 day emergency food storage. However, we still didn't have anything for emergency or have a plan. So, finally, I sat down and we bought an emergency pack that was made for 2 people and created our emergency plan. Basically, it just lists what each person is responsible for grabbing and where it is if we need to evacuate the house.

The next step in our emergency preparedness is gather all the important documents and contact information together. Hopefully I can get that done soon. You can never be too prepared.

Well, part of the challenge was suppose to take a before and after picture. However, I think it's okay if I don't post a before picture. Once I take some pictures of our emergency packs, I'll post it.

Thanks Suzanne for the great challenge! Also, it's definitely a fun challenge and you should all do it.

American Spending Habit

Many people probably knows a tradition of American spending habit - spend more than you earn. Church leaders often time remind us to mind our spending and save emergency fund. TV talk shows and books like, i.e. "Finance Dummy 101", try to encourage people to control their spending and the usage of credit card. I always puzzle about this idea and wonder how hard for a person to do this "best practice". I guess it's pretty hard because I think this is a tradition.

Just look at the recent report about the biggest ever deficit in the US government budget - 482 Billion. Also, the mortgage meltdown of the Fannie and Freddie are another good examples of how people like borrowing future money, and the Taxpayers end up paying this big fat, while the people of these two companies enjoying their luxury life and social gathering.

Anyway, I think it's very hard to teach people to control their spending and live within their means while the government doesn't set a good example. Imagine parents teach their kids to clean up their mess while parents themselves also created a mess.

In short, I think changing the American's spending habit like asking a Chinese not to eat rice for his/her lifetime.

July 4th

For July 4th, we went to Wisconsin Dells to meet up with some friends. German and Kitna were visiting Kitna's mom and stepdad there. Since it was only 2 1/2 hours away and they have the largest waterpark in America, we thought it would be fun to meet up. Luckily, Kitna's mom and stepdad were kind enough to let us stay with them. :)

Anyway, Friday night we had a BBQ. Tom (Kitna's stepdad) did a great job BBQing up some hamburgers and brats!

Then Saturday we spent all day at Noah's Ark. It was a lot of fun! The rides were a lot of fun! In fact, Andy, Kenny (Andy's bro), German, and Nick (German's brother) went on a ride called Point of No Return. I was going to go on it too until I saw it. It looked like a straight drop and I knew there was no way I would go on that. However, the boys were brave enough to take it on. Here are a few pics of them: (Right: German and Kenny Left: Andy)

The boys after finishing the ride:

German, Andy, Keona (German and Kitna's daughter), and I:

That night, we went to watch the fireworks in a nearby town. They were really good! Almost as good as the Stadium of Fire in Provo UT. I say this because we were pretty close to the fireworks so it was loud and you could feel the vibration of the fireworks going off! Off course, I don't think anything tops watching Stadium of Fire at Helamen Halls. :)

Sunday we headed home. However, we did stop in Wabasha to visit the National Eagle Center. Last time we tried to go there with my parents when they were here but unfortunately it was closed. Luckily, they were open this time and we were able to go in. It was pretty cool and we actually saw two live Bald Eagles. They had been injured and could no longer fly so they are no part of the education system that is set up. At least they are now safe. :)

Anyway, that's basically how our holiday weekend went. It was a lot of fun and went way too fast! It was hard to go back to work on the following Monday. At least Andy's family had fun. :)

Best Places to live ?? - Minnesota

When people heard us about living in Minnesota. The first thing that comes to their mind is cold. Yes. Minnesota is pretty cold. However, I do agree that Minnesota is a pretty nice place to live. You don't believe me? Look at this list. Best places to live 2008 According to the survey, the best place to live is Plymouth, MN, which host our favorite Chinese restaurant. Also, there are three cities from Minnesota that sit on the top 25 list.

So, if you think you can bear the winter in Minnesota, you should come to live in Minnesota.

Fun Weekend

It's always fun to have family around. Here's a recap of our 1st weekend of fun with Andy's mom and brother:

Saturday:
Went to check out Rochesterfest and then stopped by the mall. Afterwards, we went to Willow Creek and checked out model townhome. Andy's mom really enjoyed seeing the lake with the greenery. She is always talking about how beautiful it is. She also enjoyed the townhome because she just likes to see people's homes. She does real estate back in Macao and that's why she finds it interesting.

Afterwards, we went to the Galaxy 14 theatre and watched Wall-E. It was really cute. The best part is we got to watch it on the Mega Screen...it is the largest screen in Rochester and it's high definition...and it only cost $4.50. The theatre has deemed the hours between 4 pm - 6 pm as rush hour and any movie during that time is only $4.50. Anyway, Wall-E was pretty good. Not a lot of talking so it was perfect for Andy's mom. I think she got the basic idea of what the movie was about.

Sunday:
After church, we had a BBQ for dinner. Our friends Craig and Jaclyn wanted to meet Andy's family so invited them over as well. Plus, we had taught them how to play Mahjohng and thought it would be fun to all play together. So, after eating, Craig, Jaclyn, Andy, and Kenny (Andy's brother) played a few games. I sat between Jaclyn and Craig to offer help if they needed it. However, they did a great job playing and actually one a majority of the games. Andy and Kenny each won a round and Jaclyn and Craig each one like 3 games. It was fun. Plus, I think Andy's mom enjoyed watching us play...she especially enjoyed listening to our friends speak chinese. :)

That's basically a re-cap of the weekend. Nothing too exciting but still fun. Oh...and here's a funny story with Andy's mom.....

Friday night, we made it to the asian store to buy a few items. Andy's mom decided to buy 3 haam daan (salty eggs).

Saturday morning, I go downstairs and she had cooked juk (rice porridge). She then tells me, "Don't ever buy the haam daan's from the asian store. I cooked two this morning and when I cut it open, they each had a baby bird in it. It scared me to death. The third one also had a baby bird in it. Don't every buy the haam daan's from the asian store!."

I just laughed and explained to Andy that it was probably the Filipino eggs that she bought. In the Philippines, I guess it's a specialty and its called Balut. Anyway, she was pretty shocked that people would actually eat that type of stuff. Which of course, Andy then stated that Chinese people eat things that Americans would never have thought to eat as well. In fact, she tried to show me the eggs as well...but I didn't dare look.

We all had a good laugh. :)

Andy's Family

Andy's mom and brother finally made it to Minnesota to visit us! Andy's mom has wanted to come visit for a while but we needed to have someone travel with her. Luckily, this summer, Andy's brother was able to come. I could tell Andy was pretty excited and nervous at the same time. He was worried they would have problems with the connecting flights and getting through customs. We got to the airport shortly after they landed and Andy was actually nervous because he didn't see his family. I told him that it took time for them to get off the plane. Anyway, a few minutes later, his mom and brother walked through the gates. It was great seeing them. Since it was pretty early, we took them downtown to show them Mayo Clinic and then after dinner, we walked on the Douglas Trail for a bit.

It's always nice having family around. I can tell Andy is excited to talk to his younger brother and mom. You can also tell that they are happy to be here and see him. I just hope they don't get too bored. They don't know how to drive so they will basically be "stuck" at home while Andy and I are at work. They will be here for about 6 weeks..which means busy weekends full of fun for us.

Seattle

Last weekend, Andy and I were able to take a trip out to Seattle for my cousin Justin's wedding. We almost didn't make it but luckily, things fell into place which allowed us to go. There were only 3 cousins that were not able to be there (Ada and Amy on missions. Lisa on a vacation that was planned before hand). It has been a LONG time since practically everyone had been together. It was just great to be able to see everyone. Especially my family. My nieces and nephews are growing fast! Too bad they can't stay little forever.

Anyway, the wedding was really nice. Justin and Jessica were so happy. My sister also did a great job of taking some of their pictures. The reception was a lot of fun as well...a lot of clean up to do afterwards, but the gym looked great! My nieces also did a great job with the chinese dance they did with their cousins. I wish I could see them dance more often. But for now, I guess the clips that my older sister posts will have to do.

P90X Graduate

Today, me, Andy, finally becomes the graduate of P90X. I am so glad that I finish it although it was two weeks longer than I planned. This workout program is pretty good. However, toward the end of the program, it gets pretty boring; especially with the nice and short nice weather outside in Minnesota, it was so tempting to give up the program and go out to enjoy the nature. Anyway, I am done, and I am happy with the result.

Beautiful Weather!

I am sooo excited!!! Spring/Summer is finally here and for the past week, the weather has been perfect. Since last week, during lunch hour, I have been walking on the Douglas Trail. Every time I walk to the trail, there is one area were a red-wing blackbird will start flying above me. I know he is guarding his territory because he is just chirping away and hovering over me. Hopefully he won't attack me. Anyway, it is so nice to be outside and to enjoy the sun. With the sun being out, hopefully I'll be able to get a nice tan. :)

Picture of Red-Wing Black bird.

Stay home Mom earns 6 figure

Have you thought about how much a stay-home mom earns? Let me tell you. A stay home Mom can earn $117,000 per year according to a survey conducted by Salary.com. This survey compares the "pay levels for 10 job titles with duties that a typical mom performs, ranging from housekeeper and day care center teacher to van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer."

So, we all know that stay-home mom duties are not easy. Although we can't put a price tag on the jobs that a Mom does at home, the price tag provides a way or clue to people how much a Mom sacrifice to stay at home.

You can read the full article here.

Fixing Car

Saturday was a good day. We finally could sleep in without worrying being late at school. I finally got the time to do some of the projects around the house. I have been wanting to change the wheel cylinder in my car's rear break. I have done my research and asked my people including my brother-in-laws (they are very good in fixing car). It shouldn't be a big project. It will take a professional mechanic an hour to do it. I was planning to do it in 4 hours. I guess things would never turn on the ways that you want. It took me a about two hours to replace the wheel cylinder in one side. That was not too bad. Until I needed to bleed the brake system, things just started to turn south.

The idea of bleeding the brake system was to pump your brake and drive out all the air in the brake system through the bleeding valve in the wheel cylinder. However, for some odd reason, the brake fluid was shooting out from the wheel cylinder inside. I didn't think it would do it. In fact, that was the reason why I replaced the old wheel cylinder. Anyway, it took me another 2 hours trying to figure out how to fix this mess. Since we only have one car, anything happened to this car would lead us not able to go anywhere. I started to think about a back out strategy and worst case scenario. I guess we could call someone to tow our car, rent a car, or ride the bike to go to work.

At this moment, Tanya happened to talk to her friend and learned that her friend's husband knew quite a bit of fixing car, and they said that they would come to help. Great. Although I believe my abilities to fix the car eventually, it's always good to someone know what they do to teach you.

Anyway, three hours later, we finally replaced both side wheel cylinders. Later, we went out to eat. I was glad that the Thompsons could help us in this, and Mike said that he had a good time to do it because he liked to fix car. One thing I forget, I need to thank my home teacher Andrew for giving me a ride to get some tool earlier on that day.

Fish Farm

Previously, I had posted about our fish multiplying...well, we officially have a fish farm. Wednesday, we came home from work and Andy was feeding our fish and I started cooking. Then I hear Andy say something like this: "What? There are more fish?" So, I look and sure enough, our female guppy had another batch of kids. I believe it was about another 10 baby guppies. Will it ever end? Now Andy wants to buy a bigger tank......I enjoy our fish but I don't know about getting a bigger tank. Anyone want any free guppies?

Florida Vacation

For Memorial Weekend, Andy and I took a vacation to Florida. We had tons of fun!! The weather was PERFECT....It is in the mid 80's with a slight cool breeze the whole time we were there. So, we got plenty of sun. :) Anyway, here is a re-cap of how our weekend was.

Saturday:

Arrived at the airport and picked up our rental car. To our surprise, we were able to choose our car..of course, it depended on what size you rented, but you had your choice among that size. So, we chose a Toyota Corrola. We decided to drive to Tampa to go to the beach, which was about an 1 1/2 hours away. Anyway, as we drove, we noticed the steering wheel shook pretty badly. So, we stopped by the same rental place in Tampa to exchange the car. Luckily, the company allowed us to do this. The lady who was helping us said we could choose from either the compact or midsize cars. At first, Andy chose a Toyota Yaris but then as we were going to pick the car up, we saw that there was a Prius in the midsize section. We grabbed the keys right away and I went to see if we could change the car. The lady didn't hestitate and changed the car for us. Of course, it took us a while to figure out how to drive the car, but we had a lot of fun. Definitely saved us a lot of money on gas. :)

After we got the car, we continued the rest of the way to Clearwater Beach. It was so beautiful! We LOVED laying on the beach, swimming in the ocean, and just enjoying being out in the sun. :) We were also able to meet up with some friends for dinner later that evening.

When we were done eating, we drove back to Orlando to check into our resort....courtesy of agreeing to listen to a presentation, we were able to stay at the Hilton Grand Vacation for really cheap. It was an awesome resort...we were really impressed.

Sunday:

We pre-gifted and picked up our Disney Tickets and headed off to Epcot Center. I had a lot of fun. We went on a few rides (Space Mission, Test Track, and a few others) and walked around the different countries. We were also able to meet up with our friends Daniel and Joanne. It was a lot of fun seeing them.

Monday:

In the morning we had our presentation...if the representative didn't talk so much, I think we would have been out really quick. By the time we got to the closing the deal portion, it only took 10 minutes to finish up. We told them right away that we were not interested and that they would not be able to do anything to change our mind. Well, actually, I said that if the package cost was like $2000, then I would consider it. We were really proud of ourselves.

After the presentation, we met up with friends at the Kennedy Space Center. That was a really neat place to visit. Especially seeing all the different aspects of the space center. The coolest part was that the Discovery Shuttle was on the launch pad ready to launch in 5 days. Because it was so close, we had a really good view of the crawler. The crawler is what moves the shuttle out to the pad. I guess it takes 8 hours for them to move the shuttle out because it moves at 1/2 a mile per hour.

For dinner, we went to eat at an all you can eat sushi place for $15. Andy was the only one who bought it and he ate a ton! He ordered 6 rolls and each roll was 8 pieces. So he basically ate 48 pieces...minus a few that I ate. :)

Tuesday:

This was our last day so we just shopped around the outlet mall, ate lunch, then headed to the airport. We were sad to leave.

Anyway, that's basically our trip in a nutshell. I'll have to add more pics later.

Camping Time!!

Spring/Summer is FINALLY here!!! Up until the last 2 weeks, the weather has been horrible. It was either in the 30s or it was raining. So, to celebrate the nice weather, the first things we wanted to do after Andy was finished with classes was go camping. So that's what we did. :) I LOVE to camp so after checking the weather forecast to make sure it would cooperate, we decided to go camping at Forrestville/Mystery Cave State Park. Our friends, Ben and Sarah Joslin, were able to join us as well and we had a great time.

After arriving at the campsite, we started the campfire to cook to cook tin foil dinners. Tin foil dinners is one of my favorite things about camping. As we waited, Andy and Ben went off to the river to go fishing while Sarah and I stayed back to watch the fire. As we waited, Sarah and I chatted away and I learned that Ben was a good friend of a elder that served in my mission. What a small world!

Anyway, the guys came back and we ate dinner...had smores....and chatted....then off to bed. The next morning, Andy and I were up around 6 or 6:30 am (we are never really able to sleep in too long when we camp because of the sun)..so we got up and decided to go fishing. I really enjoy fishing as well and sometimes I don't want to leave if I haven't caught anything. Unfortunately, we didn't see any fish in the river and didn't catch anything as well. After about 45 minutes we headed back to the campsite to sit by the fire and eat some breakfast.

After breakfast, we walked on the trails along the river and just enjoyed nature! Everything was so green and beautiful. Being outside was just really nice. Hopefully the nice weather will keep up. :) I'll post pics later.

Multiplying Fish!!

A few months ago, our fish Miracle passed away after adding a female guppy to be his companion. We were really sad since we had Miracle from the day he was born. I had bought a female guppy which lasted one night. I guess she died giving birth. Anyway, lately, our new guppy was getting really really fat and I figured it was because Andy was feeding her too much. So, she was on a "diet." She was still very fat and I didn't think she was pregnant because I did see the dark area on the back like I usually do. Well, surprise surprise, Andy was feeding her tonight and all of a sudden I hear him say something like "Holy Cow!" There are baby fish in the tank!" So, I rush over to take a look. We see 6 fish and thought that was it. Later on, I went to check on the fish and there are quite a bit swimming at the top. I ended up counting 10 of them! I was pretty excited. I love to watch baby guppies grow! Hopefully the tank won't be too small for them. :)

Fishing

Last weekend, Andy didn't have to go to class!! YIPPEE! So we were actually able to sleep in and finish up a few things. Anyways, the weather wasn't too bad so we decided to go fishing at Foster Arrend. We packed up our fishing gear and stopped by Wal-Mart to buy our fishing license. We were debating on whether or not to buy a trout stamp. I was thinking maybe we didn't want to since last year the only fish we ever caught were the sunfish. Andy wanted to try it, so we bought one.

Anyway, it was chilly out but I was having fun fishing. We weren't getting any bites at our first spot so we decided to move. We were just chatting away and then I felt a fish on my line. I was soo excited and started wheeling it in. Lo and behold, we caught a trout! We were excited but we knew we wouldn't be able to eat him until the next day. We decided to stick it in the freezer for Sunday. We both remember my mom saying to wrap them up in newspaper to keep it fresh, but we couldn't remember if she killed it first. I tried calling my mom but couldn't reach her. So, Andy just wrapped it up and stuck it in....I thought it would have died by then but Andy said it was still alive. So the poor fish literally froze to death. Later, we learned that my mom actually killed and cleaned it first prior to freezing.

Oh well. :) We cooked it up the next day and it was YUMMY!

Update

So...I should be doing homework right now but I thought I'd take the time to post something. Work and school has kept me really busy lately.

This past week was hands down testing of the electronic medical record. It was the first round of integration testing. Thursday, I was so tired that I came home and basically fell asleep right away. So much for doing homework! Friday we went to a emergency preparedness fireside and by the time we got home, I still didn't feel like doing homework. So, today, I've been doing homework basically the whole day. Last week, Andy made the comment of me doing homework in the food area of the gym. I thought it was a great idea so that is what I have been doing. While he is in class, I am busy working on homework. I think it's helped a lot too because there isn't anything to distract me. But, because I haven't been too good at doing my homework during the week, I still have a paper to write. This next week will be the last week of one of my classes so I'm really excited for that! I think one class will be easier to handle. :) Especially with how busy work is getting. Here's a quick peek at what my work days will look like for the next few weeks....

Week of March 3rd: Monday and Tuesday will be revising test scripts and meetings. Tuesday I'm off to Eau Claire for a 3 day training course. I will be there until Friday.

Week of March 10th: Integration 1 round 2 testing. We will have individuals from the various health sites at work going through test scripts. So we'll be busy supporting that. Will also need to make sure test patients are registered to get ready for some other testing.

Week of March 17th: Fixing test scripts as needed. Making sure patients are registered so my co-worker can start entering medication orders to prep for testing.

Week of March 31st: I will be in Eau Claire for the whole week because barcode testing for the bedside medication verification device will begin.

Week of April 7th: Integration 2 round 1 testing begins. The barcode testing will also probably still be occuring. So, I will either be doing integration testing or barcode testing in Eau Claire.

Anyway, I won't list anymore because my schedule won't be easing up for awhile. The first implementation will be on Aug 28th and that's why things are really picking up. We definitely need to make sure we all ready.

Other than being busy, things have been really good. I had a very nice birthday. It was great talking and getting calls from family...so a big THANKS to those who remembered my birthday. :) After work, Andy and I went to eat some Mexican food. Then we dropped by a school so Andy could show me the robot he's been helping out with. Anyway, I was pretty stressed because I had a lot of homework to do so I wasn't too nice to him. I wanted to go home shortly after dinner but Andy wouldn't let me. He basically kept stalling. I figured he was up to something but I wasn't certain. Anyway, it turns out that we were meeting up with friends at a restaurant called Baker's Square for dessert. It was a very nice surprise. I felt bad that I gave Andy such a hard time...but I guess that's what stress does. At least he pulled it off and surpised me. :) Plus, it was really nice to be able to spend time with friends and chat with them. Ever since being called to work in the nursery, I don't get to talk to any of my friends so it's almost like I'm becoming "invisible." I didn't realize how much I enjoyed Sunday School and Relief Society...I got to see and chat with friends and get a good spiritual boost. Oh well, nursery is good too...hopefully I can handle it.

Well, I guess that's my brief update...hopefully I didn't ramble too much. :)

Pictures...

Pictures from when Andy surprised me with tickets to watch the U.S. Figure Skating Championship.



Pictures from our Chinese New Year Party..

~Valentine's Day~

Valentine's Day was so nice! Unfortunately, it was a Thursday so I did have to work, but I've listed a few reasons of why I enjoyed it.

• No cooking - I have been very busy with school so it was nice to not have to cook. We went to Pho Hoa (Vietnamese Restaurant) and had Pho and Spring Rolls.
• Walked Puppies - No we do not have any pets. But our friends Craig and Jaclyn have 2 cute little puppies (Oslo and Ingrid). They are currently out of town and we said we could help walk their dogs. They are soo cute! it was fun walking them around the block. In fact, Andy enjoyed walking them too. He was nervous at first but he liked it.
• Movie - We watched the movie "No Reservations." It was really cute. I had a free movie rental coupon for Hollywood Videos so we rented it. In fact, it was the last one. I had to ask the front desk if anyone had returned one. It was my lucky day because they did have one. :)
• My Husband - The best part was just spending the evening with my husband. I just want to let everyone know that I LOVE and APPRECIATE him so much. He doesn't give me flowers very often but I got a dozen white roses and a balloon from him. In fact, he had gotten off work early to buy it from Wal-mart. He told me he was on the 4:40 pm bus so I went to pick him up. As usual, I called him to see where he was. He said the bus was just exiting the ramp. As I was watching for the bus, next thing I knew is I see Andy running up to the car with the flowers and balloon in hand. It was soo cute! It is definitely hard for him to give me surprises since we only have one car and I am usually the one with the car.

Balloon and Flowers Andy gave me....

My gift to Andy...I made "roses" with hershey kisses and put it on his pillow the night before. It was fun to surprise him early. :)

Chinese New Year

So, to celebrate Chinese New Year, Andy and I decided to have a potluck party at our house Saturday night. It was tons of fun!! I made Chicken Lo Mein and our friends brought veggies, curry, and cake for dessert.

After we were done eating, we played 3 games. Andy worked very hard in putting it all together. We played Taboo with pictures, a price game (had to list 3 items from most to least expensive), and then the coach game. We started of with 10 people then the Whetten's joined us later. So, we played the coach game with 6 couples. It was very difficult but tons of fun. We played twice and the girls won! :) Unfortunately, the guys won the other 2 games.

Oh well. Anyway, it had been a while since we had a big party at our place like that so it was fun. We all had a great time. :) I'll have to post pics later.

Early Birthday Surprise

So, on Friday, Andy and I planned to go watch National Treasure 2 at the theatre on Saturday. After we got home from work, Andy started asking me if it were possible that he didn't give me a gift on my actual birthday. I started playing around and saying it wasn't but of course told him that it was okay.

Anyway, Saturday morning we woke up to go to the gym and Andy said he wanted to go up to the cities. I said that I thought he wanted to go to see the movie. He said that he didn't feel like seeing the movie. So, I agreed to go to the city. After going to the gym, Andy was talking about how it was a long drive and he wanted to go up just to eat good Chinese food....also, we had to go up the following week for his biometrics. So, I said that we could just wait then. Andy said it was up to me but that I would really regret it. I knew something was up. We got home and I cut Andy's hair..then we started talking more about what we do in the cities. Finally, I asked him to tell me what we were doing. To my surprise, Andy had learned that the U.S. Figure Skating championships was being held in the cities. He knew I loved to watch figure skating so he bought tickets for Saturday night.

I was sooo excited!! Off to the cities we went. We stopped by the USCIS building to cancel his appointment for the next week since we were expecting his green card to come. However, the guy suggested we still do it since it was already paid for. Plus, we didn't know exactly when the card would come. Luckily, they were nice enough to let him do it right then and there.

The figure skating championship was a ton of fun! We watched the Senior Couple Dance and the Ladies Free Skate. I'm so happy that Andy bought the tickets for an early birthday gift. It was definitely a fun surprise for me! :) I'll have to post some pics later.

Gourmet Club

I had mentioned long ago that Andy and i were participating in the ward's gourmet club. Well, this month we were assigned to be the host. This meant that we were in charge of the main dish and it would be at our home. There were 2 things that made me a bit nervous.

#1 - I was a bit apprehensive because our place is on not very big and we only had a table and 4 chairs. Our group consisted of 4 other couples. How in the world could we have a nice dinner with that many people? Whenever we have friends over for potlucks, we just sit on the floor. Anyway, gourmet club was tonight so to solve the issue, Andy went to Wal-mart and bought a small table that came with 4 chairs. We figured it would come in handy and we needed to replace our other plastic table anyways because it got damaged during the summer rain storms. We then used our couch to fit the 10th couple.

#2 - Cooking the main dish. The main dish was a pork roast. I had never really roasted anything and I was concerned about it being really dry. I had some cooking tips from the cooking demos that I had been going too but i still wasn't sure if it would turn out good.

In the end, everything turned out great! The pork roast was very tender!! If it weren't for the tips I had learned, who knows if it would have been as tender as it was. The flavoring was really yummy too. Also, everyone didn't mind that we were a little cozy. It was basically all about eating good food and being in good company. After we ate, we we played a quick game of fluxx. I had a lot of fun and it was great getting to know more people.

Cooking with alcohol?

I have always heard that it was okay to cook with wines and other alcoholic beverages because the alcohol will cook out. I have been attending some cooking demonstrations at Mayo and learned that this isn't true. The chef mentioned that there is still some alcohol that doesn't cook out. So, the question remains....is it okay? I figured everyone will have their different opinions on this but the one thing I learned at the demo was you could substitute the alcoholic content with other items. For example, for red wines you could use red grape juice.

Anyways, I didn't know what type of substitutions would be good for the different alochols so I was excited when I found this information. It's fairly long so if your not interested, you won't need to read any further. :)

Alcohol Substitutions in Cooking (http://whatscookingamerica.net/alcoholsub.htm)
Following is a general list of non-alcoholic substitutes that can be used in cooking. choose the option that best matches the flavor of the dish you are making:

• Amaretto - Almond extract. (Substitute 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon almond extract for 2 tablespoons Amaretto.)
• Anisette - Anise Italian soda syrup or fennel.
• Beer - Chicken broth, beef broth, mushroom broth, white grape juice, ginger ale.
• Bourbon - 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons of non-alcoholic vanilla extract.
• Brandy - Water, white grape juice, apple cider or apple juice, diluted peach or apricot syrups. (Substitute equal amounts of liquid.)
• Champagne - Ginger ale, sparkling apple cider, sparkling cranberry juice, or sparkling white grape juice.
• Cointreau - Orange juice or frozen orange juice concentrate.
• Coffee Liqueur - To replace 2 tablespoons of liqueur, use 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of chocolate extract mixed with 1 teaspoon of instant coffee, which has been mixed in 2 tablespoons of water. Can also substitute expresso, non-alcoholic coffee extract or coffee syrup.
• Cognac - Juice from peaches, apricots, or pears.
• Creme de menthe - Spearmint extract or oil of spearmint diluted with a little water or grapefruit juice.
• Grand Marnier or Orange-Flavored Liqueur - Unsweetened orange juice concentrate or orange juice. (Substitute 2 tablespoons unsweetened orange juice concentrate or 2 tablespoons orange juice and 1/2 teaspoon orange extract for 2 tablespoons Grand Marnier.)
• Kahlua - Coffee or chocolate-flavored liqueur. (Substitute 1/2 to 1 teaspoon chocolate extract or substitute 1/2 to 1 teaspoon instant coffee in 2 tablespoons water for 2 tablespoons Kahlua.)
• Kirsch - Syrup or juices from cherries, raspberries, boysenberries, currants, or cider. (Substitute equal amounts of liquid.)
• Peppermint Schnapps - Non-alcoholic mint or peppermint extract, mint Italian soda syrup, or mint leaves.
• Port Wine, Sweet Sherry, or Fruit-Flavored Liqueur - Orange juice or apple juice. (Substitute equal amount of liquid.)
• Rum (light or dark) - Water, white grape juice, pineapple juice, apple juice or apple cider, or syrup flavored with almond extract. (Substitute equal amounts of liquid.)
• Sake - Rice vinegar.
• Sherry or Bourbon - Orange or pineapple juices, peach syrup, or non-alcoholic vanilla extract. (Substitute equal amount of liquid 1 to 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.)
• Southern Comfort - Peach flavored nectar combined with a small amount of cider vinegar.
• Tequila - Cactus juice or nectar.
• Triple Sec - Orange juice concentrate, orange juice, orange zest or orange marmalade.
• Vermouth, Dry - White grape juice, white wine vinegar, or non-alcoholic white wine.
• Vermouth, Sweet - Apple juice, grape juice, balsamic vinegar, non-alcoholic sweet wine, or water with lemon juice.
• Whiskey - If a small amount is called for, it can be eliminated.
• Vodka - White grape juice or apple cider combined with lime juice or use plain water in place of the vodka.

Wines:

• Gewurztraminer - White grape juice combined with lemon juice.
• Grappa - Grape juice.
• Port Wine - Concord grape juice with some lime zest added, cranberry juice with some lemon juice added, or grape juice concentrate. Substitute orange juice or apple juice for lighter ports
• Red Wine - Red grape juice, cranberry juice, chicken broth, beef broth, vegetable broth, clam juice, fruit juices, flavored vinegar. (Substitute equal amount of liquid.)
• White Wine - Water, chicken broth, vegetable broth, white grape juice, ginger ale, white grape juice.
• Sweet White Wine - White grape juice plus 1 tablespoons Karo corn syrup. (Substitute equal amount of liquid.)
  

Andy and Tanya

I've been wanting to get a nice picture taken but Andy thought it was funny to actually go to a studio since it was just the two of us. I didn't think it was a big deal since I had found a coupon for a free sitting and free 8X10 at JcPennys. Anyway, luckily, my younger sister was kind enough to help us take a picture. I think it turned out really nice. :)

Family Picture

My whole family was finally able to take a really nice family picture...thanks to Stacy's dad and some editing by Julia.


Top: Tim, Aaron, Mike, Cassidy, Dad, Adam, Ted, Andy
Middle: Julia, Allison, Tanner, Dorothy, Mikenna, Mom, Stacy, Kyle, Tanya
Bottom: Ashton, Dallin, Kiera, Kaylee, James, Emma