Annual Report ;)

Welcome to my new blog! :) Haha I decided to RE-join the world of 'Blogger'. I've had a wordpress account for the past year or so, but I've noticed that a majority of the people I know have accounts on here. So I decided to transfer my older posts from here and - in a sense - start anew! SO many things have happened within this past year... I don't even know where to start, so I guess I'll start from where I left off and go from there. ;) 

Naturally, after the wedding comes the HONEYMOON! We had a fantastic week touring Los Angeles, California. Colin found a great deal online for 2 City Passes, which allowed us to visit all of these wonderful places:

San Diego Zoo

Disneyland

(This was in line to my favorite ride there: Pirates of the Caribbean)

((had to include this picture -- Pluto is my all-time favorite character))

California Adventure

Venice Beach

(it was SUCH a nice day outside -- we lounged in the sand and then walked around the street markets)

Sea World

(which, by the way, was FREEZING!)

When we got home, life really began. It was pretty overwhelming at first -- What? I'm considered an adult now? Since when?! I was kind of intimidated those first few days, but that wore off pretty quickly. Colin and I continued to go to work, myself and the daycare and Colin at Anything Wireless. In the Fall we both registered for classes at the College of Western Idaho. Colin was majoring in Business and I was still undecided, but more leaning towards Elementary Education.

Right before school started is when I had my first employment change. I applied at Pizza Hut in Meridian and started working alongside my brother and a couple of our other high school pals. This helped our financial situation TREMENDOUSLY; at that point I was driving my parents' Suburban, which was SO expensive to fill up with gas, and it took me 25 minutes to get to the daycare each day. Pizza Hut literally took me about five minutes, so I went that route. We also bought a car! A 2006 Ford Taurus - or in my brother's words, the "Grandma Car". Ha, the punk! :) We love it, and it's WAY cheaper to fill up than that Suburban. I started out as a waitress, and within a few months I started training as a Shift Manager. Pizza Hut is such a fun environment - Sometimes my schedule was all over the place and sometimes it got super hectic, but the friends I made there made it all worth it. I definitely miss working at the daycare, though. I miss those kids SO much! I love them and I honestly still think about them everyday. 

School was incredibly time-consuming for both of us, and I struggled getting back in the swing of things since I had unintentionally taken a year off after high school graduation. Eventually we pulled it together, though, and finished off that semester with pretty good grades. Those few months consisted of school and work, and that was pretty much it. We were definitely keeping busy, but I honestly wouldn't have it any other way. Education is so important to me -- I'm glad that I worked myself so hard and did as well as I did. 

And then came the 'season to be jolly'. It started off with the arrival of Colin's younger brother, Shane, returning from his two-year LDS mission in New York. All I can say is ... humor definitely runs in the family. This was my first time meeting him, and it was awkward. Haha I'm not going to lie; it really was, but that was to be expected. He is SUCH a funny guy, though, and him and Colin always have a great time together. A bunch of Colin's family was in town for a few days to welcome him home, and we all had a blast getting to know each other and causing mischief. There were definitely a lot of younger kids running around - I don't know how Dan and Bonnie did it! :) Bonnie had it all planned out - they had Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and other holidays all during that week. Unfortunately I worked through a portion of the festivities, but those events that I WAS able to attend were SO much fun! 

After everything died down and Colin's relatives returned home, we had a very relaxing few months. Thanksgiving was delicious as always, and Christmas was calming. Oh, and I turned 20 in December, as well. :O I'm getting so old! haha It's kind of hard to wrap my mind around sometimes... I'll always be sixteen. :) I felt great about all we had accomplished and experienced when 2011 came to a close - it was a really great end to a really great year.

2012 has brought many great things into our lives. It has definitely started out with a lot of changes. In January I decided to go down the Nursing route and signed up for a spring CNA course, which was something I had never pictured myself doing before then. If you know me even in the slightest, you'll know that I am probably the queasiest person you'll ever meet. I can't even look at a needle without feeling faint. :) 

The New Year also brought with it a new career opportunity for me as well, which is where my second employment change occurred. Colin's friend James Peterson works at Citibank in the call center, and he came to us to let us know that they were hiring and the pay was almost twice as much as I was making at Pizza Hut. Well, I was JUST beginning to feel comfortable and at home with my Pizza Hut family, how could I leave them now? It was definitely a hard decision for me to make, but in the end it came down to what was best for our little family and our future. I started work at Citi at the end of January -- I also decided to take this semester off so I didn't overwhelm myself with starting two brand new things at once, even thinking about it stressed me out so I'm really glad I did. Training at Citi lasted for about six weeks, and it was great! I was trained as an Inbound Collector. I know what you're thinking - 'collections? yikes!' - but actually, since it was inbound, it was great! If you had questions, needed to activate your card, or needed to make a payment, I was who you would talk to. The great thing about it was that people actually WANTED to talk to you. They were taking time out of their day to give you a call and seek your help and advise. It was great! I absolutely loved it - and I personally feel that I really had the potential to excel in this position.

WELL... when they hired me, they didn't inform me that they were going to be moving to outbound a month after I started taking calls. Outbound basically consisted of 'hi, my name is Macey and I'm calling to tell you that you're six months behind on your credit card payment' or 'hi, I'm Macey and I see here that you've been unemployed for the past year. How's that going? Can you pay us?' .... you can imagine how that went. I tried for a few weeks, but being called every name in the book and having people ask you how you sleep at night isn't something that I'm able to cope with. So, to make a long story short, blah blah blah, cry cry cry, I no longer work at Citibank. It would've been great if I had been able to stay inbound, but it just didn't work out that way. So right now, I'm currently unemployed. I guess it's a good thing that Colin found a higher paying job. Colin starts on Monday at Citi doing exactly the same thing that I did. The pay is better than his other job, yes, but I'm a little concerned. Bless his heart, I hope he can handle it. He just might, since we do have different personalities. I guess we'll have to just wait and see. :) 

So, more or less, that is the past year summed up in a few paragraphs. We celebrated our one year anniversary in March - which technically lasted about a week. We celebrated by going to the midnight premiere of the Hunger Games, then we went out to dinner a few days later to the Cottonwood Grille. It was super fancy - well, fancier than anything I'm accustomed to. The weekend of our Anniversary we also went on an overnight camping trip. :) It was so fun! We only stayed for a day and a half because it started getting stormy, but it was seriously a lot of fun! And it was a lot cheaper than anything else we could've done to celebrate. haha. :) As of right now, we're just enjoying these couple of weeks of unemployed togetherness. We have slept more than we have in the last year combined, spent WAY too much money, and have wasted a lot of time, but it's been great! We've been able to visit with my brothers and his brother since they're back from BYU for the Summer, and we're still enjoying teaching our 5-year-olds in Primary. Life is slowly starting to fall into place for this little family here. As far as kids go - since I know all of you have been DYING to know - no, I am NOT pregnant. Haha trust me, I am TERRIBLE at keeping secrets, so you'd know if I was. ;) 

Anyway, that's all for now, folks! I've made my annual report... see you all next year ;) [[gosh I hope not haha, I promise I'll try to post again soon!]]