downtown.

the theme for the days following christmas was city creek and plaid. 

  we went downtown with my family on the 26th to get dinner and see the lights.

lizzie left that night. :(

 

 on the 27th we went downtown again with kim and alex and saw the nativity. i'm sure if i kept up with going to city creek every day i'd get sick of it, but probably not for a few months of it.

plaid on plaid on plaid on plaid. 

white christmas.

we left san diego at about 1pm on saturday the 22nd. we had planned to leave at 11am, so i consider that a success. last year we left on christmas day after 2pm, so at least we beat last years time! unfortunately we hit traffic and the drive was all around pretty miserable with a tranquilized cat and it taking much longer than usual. bandit was actually pretty good, he only cried for the last hour straight. i felt like i was traveling with a baby and we eventually had to stop trying to console him and just let him cry. 

by the time we arrived at my dads, got everything ready for the cat and got into bed, it was 4:30 am. such a late night, but i'm proud to say that i stayed up most of the drive and hung out with jon. on sunday we went to church with my dad. it was a really good sacrament meeting. church is always the best on christmas sunday's. 

the highlight of my trip was getting to meet this baby:

 bentley webb! believe it or not, he's even cuter IRL. jon and i went over right after church and hung out with their family for a couple hours. lyndsi let me hog bentley and he even fell asleep in my arms. 

my other sweet thing.

love

(my cat is really cute, huh? you like him? he's looking for a place to live until may. help!)

on christmas eve it went from not snowing to six inches of snow! it was the perfect christmas present, everyone was excited about having a white christmas. bandit adjusted quickly too!

 lizzie with the perfect tree! it was so funny christmas tree shopping with her. it was 4:50pm on Christmas Eve and home depot was closing at 5. she and i were approached by a worker and we asked him if there were any deals on the trees since it was the last day. he told us that he'd give one to us for free so we immediately pointed at the one closest to us and said "we'll take this one." he told us that he'd seen that one before the snow storm and it was really dry. so we grabbed the one right next to it and said "this one." we didn't even look around, we grabbed the one nearest to us so that he wouldn't retract his discount! 

 lucky for us, it was the cutest little tree! 

 we celebrated christmas eve at my aunt camille's house with my family and cousins. it was our first year reenacting christ's birth story, and i don't think it will be our last.

 

 early christmas morning we went to jon's moms house. she lives right by my dads which is always really nice, there is not much travel time. christmas morning was fun there. we opened presents and played games. jon and his dog, sadie, are BFF's. we are so excited to take her to texas with us! we also went to jon's grandma's house for brunch. i love his extended family, they are always so kind and welcoming to me.

after brunch at the nielsen's/woodbury's we came back to my dads to have our second (third) christmas! the dynamics have changed so much with three little ones running around. i love watching their eyes light up when they open their gifts and when we all open the gifts lizzie helps them make us. i don't know how i didn't get any birthday photos of lizzie! but we celebrated her birth christmas night with birthday cake, dinner and pitch perfect! 

amanda posted more photos here. 

congratulations to me!

i had my last final exam yesterday! 

even better: my professor returned our research papers to us and I got an A. and i don't think i did too bad on the exam, either. horray! i officially have two more semesters of school. unless i decide a masters degree is in the cards...lets just focus on these two semesters. i'm too excited about having over an entire MONTH off school.

today, i'm going to celebrate with lots of Hulu, the gym (finally i have time for that!) and some light christmas shopping. then i have to go to work, what a drag. 

fortunately, i've been balancing my two jobs alright. i'm very happy to have school out of the equation. the past few weeks have been the busiest! i'd literally rather not have a job than money. i need to see my spouse more than two nights a week, even if that means reading a book together instead of going out, and eating top ramen! 

 we had our annual christmas party with lindsay and wes! unfortunately, i didn't get any other pictures. jon grilled us steaks and asparagus, wes made potatoes and gravy, and i heated up some corn and made dessert. (...) we made ornaments with sand from our beach and a picture from lindsay's birthday party! i'm hoping the picture will flatten up a little bit, but i'm actually not mad about how it looks. then we went on a walk and watched "it's a wonderful life". we haven't finished it yet, but the first hour made me realize that it is the funniest! movie! ever! i'm sure the ending is great too. 

 after my final yesterday, i headed straight to the temple to witness a beautiful sealing between two beautiful peeps! i'm pretty ashamed i didn't get a picture of the happy couple, but i got this one of the temple. we spent the day hanging out with jeff and kayleene and the rest of kenny's family. it was really fun!

 lucky they got married yesterday instead of today because its been raining for like 16 hours straight. san diego doesn't do well in the rain. every time it rains, its like the whole city has never seen it before. i can never understand why. the whole city floods. isn't that weird? it happens every time it rains, why haven't they figured something out?

you'd think my raspberry bushes would like it...its hard to tell though when they're hugging the ground like this. 

a decision has been made.

and that decision is...texas for the hagerman's.

jon found out last week that he got accepted at UTSA. we have been going back and forth between moving to utah and moving to texas. we officially decided to move to san antonio, texas. it was a difficult decision, but we both feel pretty confident. we will be there for a few years while jon goes to school to get his bachelor's degree, then back to utah we'll go! after i finish my spring semester at SDSU, i'll have three more classes to take for my degree. i'm going to take three art history courses at UTSA in the fall (2013) and send them to SDSU and graduate from there in dec 2013.  

 i don't know when we will ever live in the same state as the OG hagerman's again, so we are really excited to make some memories there! (Melissa lives in sacramento) ideally we would live halfway between UTSA and jon's parents. I want it to be convenient for him to get to his school everyday, but also be able to spur of the moment go to his dads house whenever we want. 

i have to admit that i'm pretty nervous: change frightens me. i am getting quite comfortable here in san diego. i have my school situation down pat-leave thirty minutes before class starts, park at the institute building, ride my bike to class. i'm enjoying my calling at church. i teach the beehives and its difficult for me to open up. i finally feel like we are able to talk to each other comfortably, and they're so open and honest in class. i have made some genuinely good friends at church as well, specifically gherine. i love my riding instructor and lovelove the horse i ride. i think those three goodbyes will be some of the hardest. i will be sad to leave our first little house. its the perfect size for us and the design is finally coming together! just in time for us to pack it all up. and coming with all of these goodbyes also comes with telling the marine corps goodbye. i'm not ready to talk about that one yet. 

the good news is, with all of the goodbyes comes a lot of hellos!

 hello to living by the cutest downtown ever! 

 hello to some true country livin'!

hello to two of the cutest grandparents. i miss my grandma's all the time. i am lucky that jon still has grandparents on both sides that are very sweet and have welcomed me into their family. 

like i said: c-UNTRY!

hello to spending lots of quality time with these two!

we are planning on making the move sometime in the spring. jon gets out of the military on may 3rd, but i won't finish school until mid may. we need to be out of our house by may 3rd, and i don't want to be moving during my finals, so we will be leaving our house sooner than that. we're planning on packing everything up and sending it out to texas to put in storage, then we will spend the last few weeks in SD with a family from church. we will leave as soon as i'm done with school and make a significant stop in utah until jon starts summer school in texas. hopefully we will be in utah for at least two weeks at that time. 

i got a job at panera bread so that i could have something on my resume by the time jon gets out and we have to find jobs out in the real world. i worked at provide commerce seasonally in april/may and they just called me back. i'm starting on wednesday and working for them for their christmas season while only working at panera one day a week. hopefully they hire me back for valentine's day and mother's day so that i can put them on my resume and say i worked there throughout 2012-13. we are doing what we can to prepare for getting out of the military. its a scary and very big step for us! the past 2.5 years has flown by so fast, i can't believe we are already preparing for a big move. i am excited for our future and can't wait to explore a new city with my main man!