Christmas 2004/New Years 2005

This year for the holiday season I went back home to Utah to be with family. I had a great time. I miss my family a ton and it was so great to see them all. It was the best it could have been with Brandon being gone. My Mom flew down from Salt Lake City and drove up with me. It was awesome bonding time with my Mom. I'm still counting the #'s on the freeway Mom. :) We both had bruises by the time we were done from hitting each other every time we saw a red car. It was a lot of fun. Then I stayed until Dec. 30 at my parents house. While I was there my sister Marni bought a fixer upper house and my whole family pitched in to help her family get it painted and cleaned up so they could move in. Even though it was work it didn't feel like work. I just enjoyed being with my family and being able to help my sister. I hate not being to be there for things like this. On Dec. 30 I drove down south 4 hours to stay with Brandons parents at the Bed & Breakfast they run in Rockville, UT. We always have a New Years Eve party. It's a lot of fun. Usually during the day we go horse back riding and then in the evening we have a dinner and play a bunch of games and have a ton of goodies. It's not the same without Brandon there but we still had a good time. I shared a room with my sister-in-law Lynsee. It was a ton of fun having our girl talks and just being able to spend time with her. Jenn my other sister-in-law was supposed to share our room on New Years Eve night but she went to sleep early and was passed out on the couch. Later when Lynsee and I had just laid down to go to sleep Jenn opened our bedroom door and then walked away leaving our door open. She never came back. She went into another room and fell asleep. In the morning we asked her why she opened our door and then left. She didn't remember that at all.
I have included some pictures of my Christmas and New Years.




From Left to Right: Me, Brandon (my brother), my Dad, my Mom




My niece Madeline showing the Barbie horse I gave her for Christmas




Me with Brandon's Sisters Jenn on the left and Lynsee on the right.
It's not the greatest picture but it was the best one I had with them.

Work Christmas Pictures

Every year my work gets their picture taken for our Christmas card to send to customers. We almost always have it taken at the La Jolla Shores. At the same time the sales support girls get their picture taken together for us to have for ourselves. These people are the best people you could ever work with. I love the people I work with and I have no doubt that God put me in their path to work with them because he knew how much they would take care of me when Brandon's away or even when he is here. I never even applied for this job. I had posted my resume on Monster.com and they found my resume. I already had accepted a job somewhere else and less than 5 minutes after I accepted the job Mike Cappetta (my manager) called and asked if he could get me in for an interview Monday morning. I was supposed to start my job Monday morning but I told him if he could get me in early enough than I would come in. The interview went well and I accepted. The same day that I accepted that job I received another job offer for more money but for some reason I did not accept it and stayed with this job even though it paid less and was farther away. To this day I do not know why I didn't accept the other job at the time. All I can say is that God really had his hand in putting me in this job. I couldn't ask for a better group of people to work with.
My supervisor Jeri is my San Diego Mom. She is one of the most generous and kind people I know. When I started there I had only lived in San Diego a month and none of my stuff had been shipped here yet and it was still going to be atleast another month before it would get there. Brandon and I were sleeping on a foam pad on the floor of our apt. and we were using plastic utensils and plastic plates and bowls. We only had the clothes that I was able to pack in my car. We had a VCR and we bought a tv with gift certificates from our wedding. We were also very poor because it took almost all of our money to come down here because we had to ship our cars since mine broke down on the way to San Diego and I wasn't sure if Brandon's car would have made it, and it cost us $2,000 to get into our apt. with the first and last month's rent. Also, I came down to San Diego before the Navy wanted me to and Brandon wasn't able to live out on town yet so I had to live in the Navy Lodge for 3 weeks before I could get into an apt. Some of the money was reimbursed but most of it wasn't. Anyways, to the point of my story. On my second day at work Jeri came up to me and told me that she had just gotten married and her and her husband each had a house full of furniture when they got married so they had to put almost a full house worths of furniture in a storage shed. She also said she had a truck and if we let her know what furniture we wanted her and her husband would bring it down to us and move it back when our furniture got there. This was only the second day I had met this lady. It still amazes me how generous of an offer that was. That is only one example of how awesome Jeri is to me. Kymm is my San Diego sister. She has also been extremely generous and caring. She is a blast to be with and she is very caring. She has also done a lot to help me get through hard times. Janice is a good friend of mine too. We chat all day long over our cubicles since ours are right next to each other and she listens to my nonsense. I also have to say that Mike is the best manager ever. He has been so understanding of my situation with Brandon being gone a lot and when Brandon is here he will do whatever he can to let me spend more time with Brandon which I appreciate so much. I also really appreciate Pia who is the sales person I support. She is such a caring and sweet person. I really love working with her even though I know I don't show it that often. Thank you all!!!




From left to right: Janice, Heather, Kymm and Jeri



Top row from left to right: Amy, Carl, Fatinha, Pepe, Mike (my manager)
Bottom row from left ot right: Janice, Kim, Kymm, Jeri, Pia, Heather

P.S. If anyone would like one of my work cards please let me know. I have plenty of extras. I bought a bunch to send to my own customers and then I just got too busy and it just got too late to send them out

Update

Hey Everyone,
I added a new picture to the Thanksgiving post. It was sent to me by Brandon's Grandparents. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!! I love this picture. I think it's a really cute picture of both Brandon and Tazzy. It makes me miss Brandon a ton when I look at it.

Inspiration for our New Year's Goals

A little motivation to help you with your goals in 2005... and if you haven't yet set any, maybe this will provide you with the inspiration to set some!

It's all in a State of Mind
Author Unknown

If you think you are beaten, you are:
If you think you dare not, you won't
If you like to win, but don't think you can
It's almost certain you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost;
For out in the world you'll find
Success begins with a fellow's will;
It's all in a state of mind.

For many a game is lost,
Ere even a play is run,
And many a coward fails
Ere even his work begun.

Think big and your deeds will grow,
Think small and you'll fall behind;
Think that you CAN and you WILL;
It's all in a state of mind.

If you think you are out-classed, you are;
You've got to think high to rise;
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But sooner or later, the man who wins
Is the fellow who thinks he can.

There is a great little book that explores this subject in quite a bit of detail, "As a Man Thinketh"... it's small, but it made a MAJOR impact on the way I view life; I HIGHLY reccommend it to all!

The book can best be summed up by a single sentence once spoken by a very wise man... but don't think you fully understand His lesson... His one sentence has a whole lot more to it than we at first realize when we read it... again, go get the book cited above and explore it... you will find out that you probably didn't understand this Man's teaching nearly as well as you thought you did... I know it opened MY eyes:

"Faith moves mountains" -- Jesus

May you realize growth in achieving your dreams and goals this 2005!

[- UPDATE -]

FYI: 2 more Wallabee pix have been added to the bottom of the Australia post!

FYI: The post about Brandon's port visit to Oahu, Hawaii has been updated... it now has several pix from his dive there... scroll down to the post and check it out again!

Hello, from the Land Down Under!

We just pulled out of Darwin, Australia a few days ago... again, this was my second time in Australia, though not nearly as nice as my time in Perth back in 2003... not that Darwin didn't seem like a nice town, but it's small (only around 100,000 people)... add to the fact that it's already a small town, but also that the Aussies treat New Year's in much the same way that we treat July 4th: we're talking *HUGE* party! The first day that we arrived at the Land Down Under, I had duty... which was probably for the best since EVERYONE on the ship as well as the Aussies themselves were doing nothing but drinking themselves into a stupor! The bars stayed open until 6AM!!! The downside to my being fortunate enough to miss all of that, however, is that the next day when I was allowed to leave the boat, practically NOTHING was open all day b/c everyone was at home sleeping and dealing with their hangovers! The next day was Sunday and the town opened somewhat but only for about 5 hours... and on Monday it was still a "National Holiday" and again, the town only stayed open for about 5 hours... kind of a bummer... the first and third days that I went out on the town I just went to the mall and saw a movie and did some very light shopping (especially the first day... everything was closed except K-Mart, "Big W's" (Walmart), McDonalds, Subway, and the theater.

The other factor that detracted from having a nice time was the weather... it was rainy (their "wet season"), EXTREMELY HOT (... "nah, mate, 'tis our kewl time of year it is... only in the high-90's on your scale... dont-ya feel the breeze???" -- breeze... what breeze??? High-90's??? Yeah, maybe not *TOO* bad, but it's 100% humidity!!!)... and oh yeah, while we were there it just so happens that it was in the middle of 3 weeks of heavy jelly-fish activity due to the surf... making it impossible to go diving because the jellies are in such concentrations, apparently it can be deadly... the only 3 weeks this happens in a YEAR, and it just so happens that's precisely when we were there!

So, no dive, no city life, no nothing really... yeah, not the greatest port visit... again, nothing against Darwin... just bad timing...

The second day, though, was pretty kewl... I went on a tour to a large, more wild type of zoo... it was basically large tracts of "natural-esque" landscape fenced in with animals roaming around wild... some of the areas you could enter and be very very close to the animals... in the case of the Roo's and Wallabees, you could even go right up and touch them! Though, the Roo's would come nowhere even close to us!

We also saw saw really neat bird flight demonstrations, and some really kewl fish and crocs. But definitely the highlight of the day was the Wallabees, as you will see below:



Brandon standing next to a Termite hill... wow, who knew that they were so BIG???


Brandon poses inside of a massive man-made rain-forest... this is actually a "room" enclosed in much the same way as a bird aviary, but on a much larger scale than the one you might have seen in your local zoo...


Brandon, petting a "Sleepy" older Wallabee... :)


Here Brandon has found a younger, spunkier, much more curious Wallabee... all he wanted to do was try and climb up on me and chew on my watch and ring...


Brandon, again with the curious Wallabee...

... and again...


A pic of the older "sleepy" Wallabee, doing what he probably does best...


"... WOOOOOW!!! I like your watch!!!"


"...mmmmmm.... thirrrrrsty...."