4.24.2011

Hotel Colombel

Tena's Dad, Tom, drove from California to Indiana to pick up Tena's youngest brother and his family and bring them back to Utah to live. Three days later, when they all got back to Utah, Tom stayed with us for a few days...which turned into a week :) We set up the guest room for him. It worked out perfect. It was actually really fun to have him stay with us. We'd all stay up late talking at night, then in the morning he would get up early and head out to meet up with one of Tena's brothers or friends he has in SLC, then we'd all meet up for dinner or something at night. It was fun. On his second to last night, we taught him how to play rockband. He is a master at Tahitian drumming, so I thought he would pick it up quick and be a pro at it. He did great at guitar, but not so much at drums... I don't blame him tho, drumming is hard! That's why I stick to guitar.
It's cute to see Tena interact with his Dad. Since Tom lives in California, we don't get to see him very often, so it's kinda cool to see them together. I've never had a chance to spend much time with Tom so the week we spent together I learned a lot about who he is. I can tell he was/is a really good Dad. He sacrifices SO much for his boys. I know he loves them so so much! I gained a lot of respect for him. It's kinda cool, he was telling me that a long time ago he had a dream Tena was supposed to marry a white American girl. He said that whenever Tena would date a Tahitian or Asian or other ethnicity, he would tell Tena that's not who he was supposed to be with ;) And when Tena started dating me, he knew it was right :) Haha, I thought that was pretty cool.

Anyways, I titled this post Hotel Colombel because for the past month or so, our house has kinda been like a hotel. We had our friend Mike spend the night when a big snow storm hit and it was too dangerous to drive back to Provo where he lives, and we had Tomotaka stay with us for a week, and we had Tena's Dad for a week, and just last night, we had 2 of Tena's friend's spend the night cuz they were too tired to drive back to SLC. That guest room sure has gotten a lot of use! I don't care tho. If any friends need a place to crash, they should know that Hotel Colombel is always open :)

4.08.2011

Mission Accomplished.



I'm officially an RN!! Ever since I was in first grade, I've wanted to be a nurse. So pretty much my whole life I've been working towards that goal...and on March 30th, 4.5 hours of testing and 180 questions later, I made that dream a reality! All the years and years of school and classes and studying and tests and early morning clinicals are DONE! I'm so proud to write 'RN' after my name at work now. I'm not quite used to it yet...a lot of the time it comes out as 'LRN'. It feels sooo good to be done. Now what...?
Now I just need to get a job I love. I *really* want to work on the post-partum unit or nursery at Davis Hospital. I did LPN clinicals there and absolutely loved it. I would wake up every morning with butterflies because I was so excited to go to clinicals (I know, crazy huh). I'd get there early and even stay late and just soak it all in like a sponge. I don't care what anyone says, I love OB nursing and hope to have a nice long career in it :)

4.07.2011

Debt Free is the Way to Be!

So we managed to rack up quite a bit of debt in the three years we've been married. Even before we were together, Tena had student loans and credit card debt, a brand new Toyota Tacoma, etc. And after we got married, we piled on an $8,000 honeymoon (We splurged a little on that ;) WELL worth it though... I'd do it again in a heartbeat), student loans for me, a couple vacations, and who knows what else. But, Tena being the good man he is, sold his dream truck, and put every cent of any type of bonus he got towards our debt. All his friends bought TVs and all kinds of cool stuff and Tena didn't buy anything. Together we came up with a budget and in three years, we were able to pay off about $40,000 of debt. Last month we officially became debt free! We got a decent tax return too so we decided to get some new furniture. We bought a brand new leather sectional and a dinning table. I LOVE them both! We are so blessed and I'm very grateful for our beautiful home and everything in it.