Disneyland Part 1

Because Tyson and I got married in the middle of a semester, and we were taking classes and working, we did not take our honeymoon when we first got married. So after 6 months of being married, and between Winter semester and Spring term, we decided to finally take our belated honeymoon. The destination: Disneyland.

Disneyland has been a huge part of my family growing up. My parents went on their honeymoon there and we spent many, many family vacations at the "happiest place on earth". Tyson hadn't been since he was really little, so I had a pretty easy time convincing him to go there. The thing I love about Disneyland is that it instantly brings me back to my childhood. I loved and still love all things Disney, so I was ecstatic that we were able to go.

Well, Winter semester was extremely crazy for both of us. We were both so busy and our classes were very difficult, so this was a much needed break. We finished finals on Wednesday and drove to the SLC airport to begin our honeymoon :) Our flight was really good. We sat next to a very kind woman that was from Bountiful. Tyson is really good at talking to people and finding common ground, so she just chatted his ears off. But we both enjoyed it. She was from Nepal, originally, and loved talking to us about her son (who she was going to go visit in LA). She commented on how young we were, but she kept on telling Tyson that he was SO wise for his age (he loved that!). And she kept on telling me how sweet I was. She also told Tyson that he was going to go on to do some great things and be very successful. She was such a nice lady and we really enjoyed getting to know her. She was also going to a conference for her religion (Buddhism) to see the Dalai Lama speak so it was nice to get to learn more about that. She walked with us out the the baggage claim and gave us a hug as we left.

To get to our hotel we booked a seat on a shared shuttle van. It was cheap, but it took us FOREVER to get to the hotel. One of the ladies gave the driver the wrong address and blamed him for getting lost. I felt bad for the driver. So that little mishap put us back about 40 minutes. But I guess it wasn't too bad. We finally got to our hotel and checked in. Tyson had a fun adventure trying to get the pop machine to accept our money so we could get a drink. He came up to our hotel room 5 different times trying to get the right amount of money. It was a very tempermental machine and only accepted bills, no change and nothing bigger than a dollar. He didn't find that out until after he had come to our hotel room those 5 different times. Haha. He eventually got his precious Sunkist, though, and we watched a few things on the cable TV, and then we hit the hay. We had an early morning ahead of us so we could beat the lines at Disneyland.

Highlights from the past month

**So I realized I never published this... so this is a bit late... But here it goes---

So Tyson and I have been super busy lately... with school, school and more school. Thankfully finals week is over. I took my last final yesterday and Tyson took his this morning. This crazy semester is finally done! Since we haven't had much time to blog, I thought I would list some of the highlights from the past month or so.

1. The car. Oh our car. It seems like anytime we plan on coming home something happens. The last time, we had to replace our tires, this time it was the fuel pump. I guess that's what we should expect for such an old car that has about 230,000 miles on it! Tyson and I were just about to head home to Pocatello for Thanksgiving. We had stopped for a bite to eat and as we were leaving a man stopped us and told us that we had a tail light out. So we drove to Walmart and got the light bulb we needed to fix it. However the car wouldn't start up again. At all. We are very grateful that we had some friends still in Provo (thanks Jesse and Beckah!) who were willing to rescue us from the lovely Walmart parking lot. Tyson's Dad was willing to come pick us up, so we didn't have to spend our holiday in Provo. We met him at the parking lot the next morning and with his red truck we towed the car back to our apartment where it sat for about 2 weeks, until we had the time to get it somewhere to be fixed. Finally after about two weeks we got it fixed. Hopefully this time next week when we head home for Christmas, we won't have more problems again, or else I think the car might be cursed!

2. Our new calling... is going to be exciting! We went to our tithing settlement and came out with callings. We're going to be in the nursery, so no more Sunday school and relief society for us! Our ward has SO many kids, so we're definitely going to have our hands full, but we are both really excited. It's probably a good thing that there are about 3 other couples called as well, because there are probably about 20ish kids or so. Wish us luck!

3. Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was so much fun, even after the fiasco with the car. It was really fun to get to spend some time with both of our families again. We got to Pocatello Thanksgiving day and went straight to the Thanksgiving dinner with my family. We had lots of good food and fun conversations. It's always good seeing my brothers that I don't get to see too often. Friday was a lot of fun. The highlight was going to Outer Limits with some of Sarah's family, Tyson's family and my little brother. We played lots of games, got a lot of tokens and played a fun round of laser tag (which got pretty intense). Tyson got really intent on winning this one game, which he used so many tokens to do. It's one of those arcade games that is always impossible to win. He did get close quite a few times, but I think it really just made him frustrated, haha. After Outer Limits, Sarah's family invited us to their house to eat another Thanksgiving dinner. We had a lot of fun and a lot of good conversation. On Saturday we went paint-balling. It was fun getting all dressed up in our camo gear. We had a rocky start when things weren't working well, but we got things figured out and had a lot of fun games. By the end of that activity I had a welt on my elbow that stayed for quite a few days, but we made a lot of fun memories. After paintball, we were able to take Joseph to the movies to see Arthur's Christmas. It was super cute and we really enjoyed it. I used to work at the movie theatre [yes I do insist on using British spelling for that word..,] in Pocatello, so it was interesting to see some of the same people I worked with before. I'm hoping they didn't think Joseph was our kid, although it felt like a glimpse at our future when we have kids. We all had a really good time, especially Joseph. We stopped at our parents house after to say goodbye to everyone. Sunday was spent relaxing and driving home. Overall, our break was a lot of fun. I wish we would have taken pictures (as you can probably tell, we are not very good at that), to share with everyone.

4. Sister having a baby. My sister had a little girl and she is adorable. They named her Temperance and I hope that we can meet her in person soon.

5. Work Parties. Tyson and I each had a work party for Christmas and both were super fun. For my work party, I helped decorate and set things up and everything looked great. We had a potluck style meal, I made my world famous fudge, and we played a white elephant game. Tyson and I ended up with a dish scrubber and a stuffed Barney. But, alas, my boss' daughter basically came and grabbed it from Tyson and wouldn't let go of it, so we let her keep it. As many would be, we were pretty distraught.

For Tyson's work party we went to Rodizio Grill. For those who haven't been there, it is similar to Tuacanos (sp?), and is basically a Brazilian Grill, a.k.a. a HUGE meat fest. These guys walk around over and over again holding big stick things full of meat, they come up to you, tell you what it is, and then if you want it, they carve it right off the stick onto your plate. It's pretty awesome. The grilled pineapple is even better. By the end of the night, both of us were stuffed, and I personally vowed to not eat meat again for at least a month (of course, that didn't happen). Anyway, both parties were a lot of fun. The picture below is of us and our good friends Jesse and Beckah.

We definitely had a lot of fun over the past month and we're looking forward to what the future will hold.

**We'll write a more recent update soon, and a highlight of 2011.

Weekend in Pocatello

Tyson and I were able to spend this past weekend in Pocatello with our families. It was a lot of fun getting to see everyone again when we weren't bogged down by the wedding festivities.

On Friday we were going to leave right after Tyson got off of work. But when I walked to our car from campus I noticed that one of the tires was a little bit flat. Not knowing anything about cars, I took a picture and sent it to Tyson to make sure that it really was a  flat tire [this reminds me, I probably should learn how to change a tire sometime soon]. We decided that I would drive it home and wait for Tyson to take a look at it when he got home from work. It made me really anxious driving those 5 minutes to our apartment. I was just waiting for it to blow, and I have no idea how to change a flat tire. But, I got home alright and waited in our apartment for Tyson to get home. Tyson walked into our apartment and said it was even flatter than when I sent the picture a few minutes earlier, so he would put the spare on and go to a tire store to get some new tires. It had already been on our list of things we needed to do before the weather started changing too much, so at least it wasn't too unexpected. We looked up different tire stores to see how late places were open. Most were closed already, but Sears was apparently supposed to be open until 9 pm. So, after Tyson got on the spare, he left to Sears and I started packing so we could leave just right after he was done. When he got there they were actually just closing. I guess the times on their website were wrong. So, Tyson paid for the tires so we could get them on first thing in the morning and leave pretty early on. We are just super grateful that our tires blew before we were on the freeway on our way to Pocatello.

Since our plans to head out to Idaho that night were down the tube, we got some dinner and spent a relaxing night at home catching up on some of our favorite television shows (i.e. Modern Family, Person of Interest, The Office and Psych).

We got up early Saturday so we could leave pretty early. But, the guys at Sears had something else in mind for us and took 2 hours to put on our tires [ugh!]. So we left much later than we would have liked. The drive wasn't bad. We only hit snow in SLC and then it was pretty clear the rest of the way. Don't judge us, but we may have listened to Christmas music all the way home... haha.

We met up with Tyson's family for Joseph's birthday lunch at Sizzler. It was a lot of fun getting to celebrate with Joseph and catch up with Tyson's parents. After Sizzle we went to Outer Limits (an arcade place), to play laser tag, mini golf and some arcade games. The mini golf game was pretty fun. It was cool to play with black lights. Basically, it just reminded me how terrible I am at mini golf. Laser tag was really fun. I have never really done it before, so it was a brand new experience for me. Tyson, Joseph, Lorie and me played with another mom and her two daughters. I am pretty proud that I won 2 out of the 4 rounds [Tyson won the other 2], since Tyson was there. The highlight was when Joseph came up to me and asked for an alliance and then about 2 minutes later when we were standing next to each other he turned on me, saying he just wanted to get a few more points. Haha. After the laser tag games we played another round of golf and then played some arcade games where we won some tickets for Joseph to get some prizes. We had to rush out before he could pick anything, but I'm sure he'll get something great later.

We rushed back to Tyson's parents' house to get ready for the ISU Civic Symphony Concert. When we arrived we got some fancy VIP passes and Tyson and I found out we were going to attend a private concert before the h'our dourves. The concert was by the Marcus Roberts Trio. They were fantastic. I wasn't able to find any videos online that do them justice, but they were wonderful--maybe you can try searching them on youtube. After the private concert, we had some yummy h'our dourves. My favorite was the dark chocolate cake that they had. Yum! After h'our dourves we watched the concert, featuring all Gershwin music. It was fantastic and so fun to listen to. Tyson and I truly had such a great time together and with Tyson's parents.

Sunday we went to church with my family. It was such a great experience. It was the first time I had been to church with my brother, Steven, in a very, very long time. I was so happy to be in a setting where we could feel the spirit so strongly together. After church, Tyson and I helped cook dinner with my family. It's always fun to cook together, even though I always manage to make a mess and it usually always ends up on myself. I don't know how it happens. It just does. Dinner was very yummy and it was fun spending time with my family. After dinner we loaded up even more wedding gifts [we have a vacuum now!], and headed to the Murray's for Joseph's birthday. We were able to sing Happy Birthday to Joseph, in every rendition imaginable. He even sang a verse to himself. Then we ate some ice cream cake from Tastee Treat. After that we headed home, with a minor detour to my Aunt and Uncles, which means time for lots of laughing!

We had a wonderful weekend and we were so glad we got to spend it with our family. You are all so important to us and we love you all very much. Thanks for all your love and support!

Pictures from the Wedding

In case some of you didn't know, our photographer put together a slide show and posted some of our wedding pictures on her blog. Here are the two different links:

Slideshow-- http://www.merephoto.com/brittanitysonslideshow/

Blog--- http://www.merephoto.com/blog/weddings/brittani-tyson-10-07-11-utah-wedding-photographer/

I hope you enjoy. We had such a great time with our photographer and she took magnificent photos. Thank you so much, Meredith!

Sleep talking

While we were engaged and dating Tyson failed to mention that he talks in his sleep. Like he can have whole conversations in his sleep. So, I found out the fun way.

A few nights ago I went to bed a bit earlier than Tyson because he had to stay up late studying for a midterm. He woke me up when (I thought) he was finally coming to bed. I started talking to him about something and then he started going off on something that had nothing to do with anything. I had no idea what he was talking about and I told him so.

Then all of a sudden he said, "Brittani what are you talking about?" and I asked him what he was talking about and he told me "I was sleeping so I didn't say anything." I then told him he had been talking to me for like 5 minutes. We both laughed and then quickly fell asleep. And now for the life of me I can't remember what he said to me, but I remember feeling frustrated because he wasn't listening to me and then laughing when I found out why he wasn't. We talked about it the next day and Tyson said, "Oh I thought I told you I talked in my sleep a long time ago." Haha. Nope. He did not. But now I know and I'm interested to see what else I'll find out.

We're Married :)

Tyson and I had our big day about a week ago. We're both loving FINALLY being married. It felt like our engagement was so long. The wedding went wonderfully and we really enjoyed being able to spend time with our family and time with each other. The sealing ceremony was so special, and the weather cooperated so well. The lighting was perfect and our photographer had a grand time! 

Our reception turned out very well, too. Tyson and I are truly blessed with a loving and supporting family. Thank you all so much for your help with the wedding--decorating, serving, baking, videoing (is that a word?), making me look beautiful, cleaning up and just being there for us. We could not have done it without all of you. We had so many people come to our reception to show us love and support and we are so grateful for all of them, as well. 

Tyson and Brittani Murray

October 7, 2011

Sealed for time and all eternity in the Manti Utah Temple.