shoes!

I was laughing as I kept pulling out pairs of shoes and Brett kept saying “wait, there’s more??” I said “were you doing this like a shoe intervention? to see how many pairs of shoes I had so I would know not to buy more?” It was funny. Whatever it was, it worked. I did get rid of a few pairs of shoes!

Church building in Fajardo

From there, we grabbed some lunch and drove to Seven Seas Beach in Fajardo. It was so beautiful! We did some snorkeling, but didn’t see too much. I saw a crab and some jellyfish. One jellyfish actually stung Seth, but thankfully not too bad. Brett found this awesome shell, but we didn’t keep it because the sea snail was still living in there.

Sea snail

We spent most of the day just relaxing and enjoying the beach.

Brett & Sarah at Seven Seas Beach

After the beach, we walked along the little shops close to Papa Bui’s house. There were a lot of street vendors out because it was the weekend. The scenery was beautiful.

beautiful scenery

We stopped to get some pina coladas and other delicious drinks before we went back to Papa Bui’s apartment and swam in the pool. The drinks were amazing!

Pina coladas and strawberry banana drinks

We spent the evening talking and swimming with my uncle and his family. It was a perfect day. After the pool, we packed, stayed up late talking with Seth & Mery, took a 2 hour “nap” and left for the airport. Our wonderful Puerto Rican vacation was over, but it was totally worth it! It was so much fun.

Pretty Carmen

Brett & I at our table

There was alcohol available for those who drank, but the ones who didn’t drink were crazier on the dance floor than those who did. Namely, my brothers. It was quite hilarious to see them dancing on the floor so crazy. One woman who was a professional dancer asked who those two young men were with all that rhythm! haha. Check this out:

That night was a late one for my family who had to pack up all their things because their flight left so early the next morning. Seth, Mery, Brett and I had one last day in the PR and it was a good one. Stay tuned for our last day.

Family Picture

Brett climbed up a Palm tree and brought down a coconut he successfully opened. Brett, Mom and I drank the coconut milk, which was delicious, and shared the coconut meat too.

Brett and the Palm tree

From there, we drove to Old San Juan and El Morro. A lot of the rules of driving that are enforced in the states are not enforced very much in Puerto Rico. For example, seat belts are optional, along with some stop signs and red lights (all depends on if someone is coming the other way). We saw so many people run red lights, cut in front of you, drive on the shoulders of the highways and avoid hitting you  by inches. Brett was an amazing driver. He quickly adapted to the Puerto Rican driving rules and felt like a race car driver. He weaved in and out of cars, kept up the pace, ran some stop signs and red lights and drove like a true Puerto Rican. I loved it!

El Morro was our first stop. El Morro is a 500 year old fort that was built when the Spanish ruled Puerto Rico. It went through a lot of battles with a lot of different countries until the USA conquered it. Now, it is an awesome historical exhibit and probably one of the oldest “American” ruins. I loved walking around, learning about the history and taking in the beautiful scenery.

El Morro

El Morro from the back

From El Morro, we walked to Old San Juan, which is one of my favorite parts of Puerto Rico. I love the colors of the buildings, the blue brick roads, all the little shops you can go into and the street vendors. It is really quite charming and I wish we could have stayed longer than we did. We really enjoyed our time there.

cute houses

another cute street. The governor of Puerto Rico lives in the blue house at the very end of the road

Old San Juan was the end of our third day in Puerto Rico. The fourth day will be up soon!

Welchito!

Welchito means little Welch’s. So cute! I loved it! After that, we finished driving to El Yunque. When we got there, the road was closed! I was so bummed! We talked to the guy directing traffic to go back and he said to follow the white Mustang who was going an alternate route. We joined the caravan of cars and followed the white Mustang. We were on these winding, super narrow back roads that were really quite frightening. I had to close my eyes sometimes because I thought we were going to hit the cars going the other way. Finally, after thinking we were lost, we saw a sign for El Yunque! We were there! We found a parking spot and went to the first waterfall. Usually, it trickles down, but because of all the rain it was a lot bigger than I had ever seen before. Brett and I forgot our camera at Papa Bui’s house that day, so we relied on the everyone else’s cameras and Brett’s phone. Here is the first waterfall:

Brett and the first waterfall in El Yunque

From there, we drove to another spot in the Rainforest and hiked down to another, bigger waterfall. The hike down wasn’t very far, just under a mile, but it was absolutely gorgeous. Everywhere I looked, it was beautiful.

El Yunque

pretty flower

All along the hike down, we are walking next to a river that turns in to the big waterfall. Of course, as soon as we got there, Mery, Seth, Carmen, Brett and I got in. The water was really cold at first, but then it felt great!

beautiful waterfall

If you look closely, you can see people standing behind the waterfall. It was beautiful and we had a great time in the Rainforest. When we were done, we hiked back up and then drove to a restaurant close to Papa Bui’s house and apartment. David, Donny and Cassi met us there. It was a wonderful second day in Puerto Rico. Day 3 will be up soon.

Beach at Cabo Rojo

From there, we drove to Arecibo where we went to another beautiful, but different beach. This beach has a cove surrounded by rocks. When the waves come crashing into the rocks, it shoots up 30 feet in the air and then settles calmly into the perfect swimming cove. When we went, the water was pretty mellow on that side so the waves didn’t shoot up really high. It was still beautiful though. We saw Dory fish when we snorkeled and I loved that.

Beach at Arecibo

After that, we drove to my Grandpa’s house where we ate pizza and then went to an extra apartment and house that he owns in Naguabo to sleep.

The next day (Thursday, Aug 12th) we went to El Yunque, the Rainforest! That post will be up soon.

Our new apartment is lovely. We are in a studio, which we have always wanted to try but had been too afraid to actually do it. We always thought it would be adventurous and fun to be creative about where we put our things. It has been fun, but challenging. I was really getting nervous when we started moving in all our boxes, suitcases, books and furniture. I wasn’t sure if we would fit. But we put things away as best as we could and tried to figure things out a bit and we decided we needed a wardrobe from Ikea. So we went to Ikea and bought a wardrobe. It. was. heavy! When we got it home, we started putting it together next to our bed because we thought it would be a nice divider between our “bedroom” and our living room. Well. It was harder to put together than we imagined. At one point, I was standing on the bed trying to hold the ridiculously heavy top piece of the wardrobe stable while Brett put the bottom part together. All of a sudden, WHAM-O! I wasn’t holding the top piece anymore and it came crashing down right next to where Brett’s head was. The top of the wardrobe was completely demolished when the top piece ripped out of it. Then I looked down. Right next to my foot was a HUGE hole in the side of our bed. This could easily have hit my foot or Brett’s head. Both were in the vicinity of this hole.

While I was bawling my eyes out and saying “I’m so sorry, Brett! This is all my fault! I broke the dang wardrobe!” Brett was saying “ok, how can we fix this?” I love him. He wasn’t even mad that I had broken the wardrobe. His first concern was that neither of us were hurt. His second concern was finding a solution to the mess I had just made. And he did. He flipped the wardrobe around and put it together the other way. We put it up and took a look at it. And hated it. It was too big for our apartment and we were worried it would fall on us if we had an earthquake in the middle of the night and kill us. So we took it apart and returned it to Ikea. What a mess. By that point, we were just glad to get rid of it. Here are some more recent pics of our studio:

I don’t have a good picture of the kitchen yet, but I’ll put one up soon.

Brett and I also went to Sacramento twice in July to visit Grandma & Grandpa Rosenlof. The first weekend we were there, we got to see Janet and Jay Bernhisel and their son, David. Janet is Grandpa’s sister, Jay is her husband and David their son. It was my first time meeting them and Brett’s first time seeing them in a long time. It was so fun to hear old stories and listen to Grandpa and Janet sing the Norwegian National Anthem in Norwegian. We also got to see Spamalot and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Thank you Grandma & Grandpa for the wonderful weekends. We can’t wait to see you again soon!

Well there ya have it! I’m totally caught up. The next few posts will hopefully be shorter and without so much information overload. Talk soon!

The Champion!

The competition took up our whole month of March. In April, we were too exhausted to do anything too extravagant so aside from a trip to Sacramento to show Grandma & Grandpa Brett’s Bike Dashboard, we stayed home. I started a new term at DeAnza and West Valley and kept working on some institute classes I was taking. At one point, I had 10 classes at the same time. I’m not sure how I really got through all of that. I was either in class or did homework from 8:30 am-6:30 pm when Brett would come home. On Thursdays, I didn’t get home until 9pm because of a late institute class I had. Brett didn’t get too many good dinners that month! haha. It was a busy, but highly productive month. But, we did find time to dye some Easter eggs.

Easter eggs

May was a fun month for us. We got to go to Disney World with Brett’s whole family, grandparents included. It was the first time that Brett’s entire family was together since Brett returned from his mission in 2005 (we think). We had such a great time seeing all the family! Lincoln and Ellie were beyond cute. Lincoln said so many funny things like “das siiiiiiilly” or “I don’t see any cropadiles anywhere!” or “NO THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!” Brett and I quote that hilarious little boy on a daily basis. And of course, Ellie with her adorable smile can make anyone happy. We went to all the Disney parks, rode all the best rides, talked, laughed, ate lots of good food, took a lot of pictures, swam a lot and just had a wonderful time with family.

the whole gang!

Brett and I also went to MakerFaire again this year and saw the weird/interesting/cool things people make. We went with some friends and it was really fun.

Tiny trolley

Also in May, I got a chance to meet up with a friend of mine from Preschool for dinner in San Francisco. She and I went to BYU together but since I got married and moved to California, we haven’t seen each other too frequently. This was the first time in 2 years that I saw Grace and we had a great time at dinner.

Sarah & Grace Finlinson

June. In June, we made the decision to move to Walnut Creek, CA in pursuit of a recent job offer Brett had received with Verizon Wireless. We had to make the decision quickly. Brett was called on May 17th for an interview, interviewed on May 19th and offered the job on the spot. He gave his 3 weeks notice to PwC on May 21st. It was fast. But we had to make a fast decision because our apartment lease was running up at the end of June. Luckily, everything fit into our schedule perfectly. Brett started working at Verizon Wireless on June 14th, our lease ended June 29th, and the classes I needed to go to campus for ended June 24th. It could not have worked out more perfectly. Because we had a month to make the move, we realized we had some unfinished business sitting in our garage, namely the boat. Brett and I worked hard to finish it and take it on its maiden voyage before we moved. A friend of ours in our ward let us take it to their house and try it in their pool and it was really fun. It worked! We didn’t sink.

Maiden voyage!

On Brett’s last day of work at PwC, I made him some cupcakes to celebrate!

Celebration cupcakes

Somehow, while I was doing dishes, a cupcake ended up on my face. I blame Brett.

haha

We also had to say good-bye to our CTR 7 Primary class. We had a great time being Primary teachers. It also meant we got to spend all 3 hours at church together and we loved that!

CTR 7 Class (not pictured, 7 year old Sarah)

How they really were in class...just kidding! They were so much fun!

A sweet couple in our ward hosted an open house for us and another man who was moving out of the ward. I was so amazed that they would be so kind to do that. And people actually came! To say good-bye to us! And they brought food! We really had a wonderful ward in the Blossom Valley Ward. It was so hard so say good-bye. It didn’t really hit us that we were moving away from all that we knew as home for a year and a half until after we had all our things in the car that Sunday night and we did our last walk through in our totally empty apartment. Both of us were crying sentimental tears as we thought about the wonderful time we had in San Jose, the beautiful people we met and the memories we created. San Jose and the Blossom Valley ward will always have a special place in our hearts.

Next stop: July. We’re almost caught up!

Phone Booth

From there, we flew to Rome! I fell in love with Rome. Other than the fact that I couldn’t understand anything, I was constantly lost and couldn’t talk to anyone, it was fabulous. Thank goodness I had a fluent Italian speaker who could order gelato for me twice a day! Everything about Rome was wonderful. I loved the food, the tiny, windy roads with overgrown plants and laundry hanging out the windows, I loved all the ancient ruins and the romantic feeling that lingers in that beautiful city. We saw all the sights: Vatican City and St. Peter’s Basilica where we saw La Pieta, (the sculpture Michelangelo did when he was 25 of Mary holding Christ’s body after he was off the cross-incredibly moving!)  and the beautiful Sistine Chapel. We also saw the  Colosseum, the Roman Forum (Rome’s ancient town center),  Palatine Hill, the Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Trevi fountain, Campo di fiori, and Piazza Navona where we saw water fountains sculpted by Bernini. I have a very detailed journal entry about this England/Rome trip with history and all sorts of facts I’m not going to write here. If you want to know them, just call me up and I’ll tell you everything I know.

Sarah & Brett and some ancient ruins from Palatine Hill

We had a fabulous trip to London and Rome and we are looking forward to our next one…whenever that will be! Brett was especially sad to leave Europe because he told me “I’m a European trapped in an American body.” hahaha. Gotta love him!

After our trip to Rome, we went to Sacramento to help with our friend, Jessica Edvalson’s wedding. Grandma & Grandpa Rosenlof were helping a lot so we decided we could help too. We had such a great time with the newlywed couple dancing and eating great food. It was such a fun night!

Brian & Jessica Edvalson

Of course, we went to our ward Trunk-or-Treat on Halloween and we dressed as nerds this year. I know, I know, we’ve already been nerds for Halloween but our thoughts the whole month of October were on our trip and not on Halloween. Our time was up. Our creativity suffered. And we resorted to something we are only too familiar with. We were nerds.

Nerd Brett

Now isn’t that hilarious? I laugh every time I see this picture. Sorry you don’t get to see my picture as a nerd. It was too horrifyingly ugly to be seen in public.

Moving on! November! In November, Brett turned 25! He had some cake, some wonderful gifts and we had some friends over to celebrate.

Happy 25th!

Soon after that, Brett’s family came to Sacramento for Thanksgiving with the Rosenlofs-a yearly tradition for as long as Brett can remember. We had a great Thanksgiving weekend with family eating way too much food and delicious pies, trying out the ram’s horn, going geocaching, watching slides, breaking wishbones from the previous year, catching up on sleep and talking with family. I love the holidays!

Thanksgiving walk with my honey

December came in a hurry and we had gifts to make! We decided to try and make a lot of our gifts that year for a fun, economical, meaningful way to give gifts. We screenprinted shirts, onesies and notecards, jazzed up some shirts with some beadwork and sewed a messenger bag. We got a Christmas tree and then ditched it before Christmas because we flew home to be with family! It was the first time Brett’s whole family was together since he left on his mission in 2003. We also got to visit my family in St. Louis which was wonderful. Always a treat to be with family for the holidays.

Brett & Sarah Christmas holiday

After so much traveling that fall, we decided we wanted to stay home in January. I enrolled in school full-time and was busy getting classes done from two different colleges. I also got my wisdom teeth out and looked like a chipmunk for Martin Luther King Jr weekend. Luckily, I had an extra day to recuperate from the awful experience that was.

Pathetic, haha

In February, our stake hosted a dance for the adults. It was themed in the 50’s and they even hired a live band! It was so much fun! I got together with some girls in the ward and we sewed skirts for the dance.

Let's go to the Hop!

On Valentine’s weekend, Brett and I hung out with friends, went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner and had a great time together. We planted some cute succulents too.

succulents

In February, Brett was chosen as a finalist for the Nokia Push N900 competition. See more about that here. Before he started on his design, we spent the weekend with Grandma & Grandpa Rosenlof in Pajaro Dunes. It was a great weekend and wonderfully relaxing before the busy month we had ahead of us. We had the competition and I had finals the same week we were presenting to the judges.

More on that in March….and the next post! Stay tuned!

Well, to catch you up since last May 2009 (Can it really be July 2010 already???), I decided to put up a few pictures of the highlights of this past year for us. So sorry it has taken me so long to post! Here goes:

So the last thing I posted about was Ashley coming home from her mission and Kelly’s graduation. Shortly after that, my Mom flew to San Jose to visit me! Unfortunately, it was a short visit. Long enough to go to In-N-Out, a yoga class and then get the call that my Mom’s mother had passed away in South Carolina. Soon we were online looking for the first flight out. Brett had to stay home because we were in charge of a ward activity and we both couldn’t be absent if we were the sole ones in charge. Thank you, Brett. Mom and I got to South Carolina and went to Mama Bui’s funeral. It was a very sad but spiritual experience, especially since I got to help dress Mama Bui for the funeral. I miss her like crazy and still cry when I think about her, but I know I will see her again someday.

Sarah & Mama Bui December 2007

That’s the end of May for us…on to June! There aren’t too many highlights for this month. Brett hid a geocache:

Can you see it?

We saw “The Fixx” free concert at Santa Cruz Beach:

On the beach

and we started our boat!

Captain Brett and his boat

July came before we knew it and we decided to go backpacking on the Fourth of July weekend. It was hot but it was great! We went to Henry Coe State Park (near Morgan Hill) and hiked down to a campsite, spent the night and hiked back to our car. We saw a lot of neat things on our hike, including terrifying snakes but we won’t talk about them…

Henry Coe State Park

We were also fortunate enough to go to Pajaro Dunes for a wonderful weekend with Grandma & Grandpa Rosenlof. They took us to the Carmel Mission. Look at these cuties!

Two Cuties!

We had a wonderful weekend in Pajaro. Always so refreshing to be at the beach! A few days after our weekend in Pajaro we were off again! This time to St. Louis for my Mom’s 50th birthday surprise party.  Brett and I got out of Dad’s car at the corner of the street and just started walking down the sidewalk towards their house. Mom was outside talking to neighbors and Dad and she looked at us THREE times before she realized it was us! Then she almost had a heart attack and started screaming! It. was. awesome! We spent the weekend together as a family and even went on the Becky Thatcher for a Riverboat Cruise that ended in fireworks! The perfect day.

Mom & Dad and the Becky Thatcher

That pretty much wraps up July. We had a great month in August too. We went to the Strawberry festival, 2 plays with Grandma & Grandpa (Cats & Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) and we went to a friend’s wedding reception.

Brett, Sarah & Cam Audong

In September, I turned the big 21! People called me, wrote on my facebook wall and sent me really nice presents. Thank you all! Brett bought me an adorable dress and took me to see a show! It was a great birthday!

Make a wish!

I also tried my hand at a little more sewing and made these baby shoes!

Baby Shoes!

Some of you may know that Brett and I like to ride our bikes around town. But you may not know that before we put our bikes away, we always did tricks. My tricks were usually pretty lame like the ol’ side saddle. But Brett’s tricks were always fun and slightly dangerous.

The ol' side saddle trick, not very cool...

The ol' feet on the handle bars trick. Scrunch face included

Brett and I also went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium last September and had a great time. They had an awesome sea horse exhibit that was my favorite part of the aquarium. I think Brett’s favorite part was seeing me scream when I saw the hammer head shark. Those things are scary! Their eyes are on the sides of their heads! Gross.

Awesome sea horse!

Last highlight of September: Kayaking in the Pacific Ocean at Santa Cruz! We were really excited to go and we had a great time! Our favorite things were the otters we saw playing in the water and seals sleeping (and snoring!) with their flippers sticking out of the water. So cute!

Cute sea otter

Are we done yet? Not quite! Stay tuned for part 2!