The beginning of the year brought with it the beginning of four months of hell for Chase.  Taking 17 credits at BYU (most of which are challenging courses), working full time and finding time to be a family man can definitely give someone ulcers.  But for the first week he was amazing at it.  We were waking up at 6AM to get him to work by 6:30 and then I would putter around the house half-awake until it was time for me to leave.  Most days he didn’t get back from school until 8 and by then we were ready to go to sleep to wake up early the next day.

BUT thanks to BYU and the craptastic way that they handle their students schedules, Chase was dropped from 9 of his credits without them even really telling him.  For the past semester, he has been talking to countless counselors to make sure he was able to take certain classes even though he wasn’t taking them in order and they all gave him the green light.  However, a few days ago he went to meet with a counselor about a totally unrelated issue and she pulled up his schedule and said “you can’t be in these upper division classes” and dropped him from them.  No one at BYU is working with him to allow him in these classes even though he has no other classes that he can take right now.  So my high-stress husband is now pretty stress free.  He is only taking 2 classes on campus and maybe a couple online, but other than that and going back to a normal work schedule, he is pretty flexible now.

And because of this flexiblity he now has time to work out.  The Brammer family is doing the P90X challenge together and let me tell you….it is ROUGH.  We only did our first workout last night and we couldn’t even make it through more than 35 minutes of it.  We are going to have to work extra hard at this.  So now the time that I thought I was going to get to spend with Chase has now turned into 1 hour of torture in the form of a workout video.

Basically so far this year has been blah, with the occasional happy moment such as my friend Lindsey Petersen Hannay’s wedding last week which I got to go to, my sis Tay coming to stay with us next weekend, Indian food runs with Chase at night and our temple date nights.

Thank goodness for that little light at the end of the tunnel….KAUAI!  I can’t wait to be there in 8 days.  We need a break from life.

So, I am going to try to be better at keeping this thing updated.  I honestly forget that we even have a blog sometimes.

This month has been the craziest/busiest of our marriage yet.  What with Christmas shopping, parties, finals, work, snow storms and such we have barely had any time to sit back and relax.  This month is going to be such a welcome break from the craziness of life.  Well for me at least.  On Monday, Chase starts his busiest semester yet–working 40 hours a week and taking 17 credits at BYU.  We will have to see how long he can take the heat.

Christmas was fantastic.  It was my first year spending the holidays away from my family which was sad, but I got to be with my other family, the Brammers.  Christmas Eve day, most of the Brammer clan went skiing at Sundance while I had to go into work…but luckily my boss let me off early so I was able to finish up my last minute shopping and get to their house on time for the festivities.  Jeanne made some delicous soup and bread bowls for dinner and we had a quiet night together just talking and visiting with each other.  When Chase and I got home, we opened our Christmas pajamas and watched Fred Claus.

Christmas morning was fun because we got to sleep in a little and we were just us opening presents at our house.  We had Baxter come out and open his stocking first, which was full of bones and one cute little mouse chew toy that Chase bought him.  He was a good pup and sat by our feet chewing on his mouse for like an hour while Chase & I exchanged gifts.  Then we packed everything up and headed to the Brammers for Christmas morning breakfast.  It was really fun to see the twins and Sophia open their toys.  They are such cute little kidlets.

After that we drove to my house in Logan and spent some time with the Crawford side of the fam.  My cousin Chase called from his mission (Cananda) and we all got to talk to him.  He sounded SO good.  Very mature and happy.  It was great to hear his voice.  Then we went back to my house and exchanged gifts to siblings and opened our presents from my parents.  There were these two matching boxes for Chase & I and after opening the others (which were full of great clothes, biking jerseys, blankets, etc.) we opened these boxes to find TICKETS TO HAWAII!  My parents are the best.  They have been planning this family trip for a while, but we weren’t sure we would be able to go because of the cost, and so they gave us flights for Christmas!  How awesome.   Then we spent the rest of the night watching movies and playing in the snow.

The next day my aunt Tracy called and said that she had extra tickets to the Jazz game for that night and that we could have them if we wanted.  I had never been to a jazz game so we claimed the tickets and spent an awesome night on the front row watching the Jazz v. the Mavs game.  I absolutely LOVED going to the game.  There will have to be more of those in the future for us I think…

But since then, we have just been trying to catch up on life and enjoy the break before Chase starts up school and work again.  We had an awesome New Years Eve hanging out with some of our best friends, Brady White, Kellie Goff and Wilford Wong.  We played some games and had the traditional Martinelli’s to ring in the new year.  I think that is the latest we have stayed up in months. 

Jeez,  I LOVE being married… What a life!