Happy Frosty Friday!

To the Bingham relatives- Bry and I decided to have a (chocolate) Frosty Friday here in Calgary! :)

 

Mmmmmmm. 

I love my sister

So my camera totally does NOT do this cute thing justice. (It came like this minus the ornaments that were included separately- thus why the arrangement may not be the greatest because I put on the ornaments, not my sister. lol.)

 

 

I love Christmas and decorations- no matter how small. =) 



Ally Condie book signing

She is wonderfully nice and it was great to meet her. :) I thank my sister for informing me of this event and encouraging me to go. It was worth the hour-long wait to meet the author of some books that I love.

That's her. Next to me. :)

I tried to crop this but my computer isn't letting me save it. So here's the unedited version.
Thank you to my husband for taking the picture. :)

Below is me with my signed copy of Reached. I haven't actually read this (the last book of the trilogy) yet, but I will over Christmas break. :) 

I got a copy of Reached signed for my sister as well, and I think she'll like the note Ally Condie wrote for her. ;) I'll try to get it shipped off soon so I don't keep her in suspense for tooo long.

California air is my favorite

It felt great to be able to go home for this Thanksgiving break and see many of my relatives. I wish I had taken more pictures than I did, but oh well.

Wednesday we were able to mostly relax. We had a nice visit with my Uncle Sean, after which we had a dinner at Strizzi's. Mmmm. The flavors at Strizzi's were DElicious.

Thursday was Thanksgiving- there was lots of family and lots of food- two of my very favorite things. Together it makes for a beautiful evening and a totally stuffed stomach. I wish I had taken a picture with my own camera of the food table, but I only took one with my sister's camera. Oh well.

Friday we- myself, my hubby, some of my immediate family and some of Isaac's family- went to Monterey. In the Aquarium, I particularly enjoyed looking at the jellyfish because they're weird and incredible. Actually, they're the only things I took pictures of there. If my camera were more apt to taking pictures through glass, I may have taken more and of different things, but maybe not.

I thought these were pretty weird little light jellyfish.

They're incredible, and so very very strange.

And this is me. And Bry. In Monterey after eating a clam chowder bread bowl (Bry's requested California food) and Ghirardelli ice cream (my requested food- I helped him finish his, even). =)

I was kind of tired after going to Monterey and stopping at Gizdich Ranch, but still happily went to Fuddruckers to eat an ostrich burger and a bite of Bry's elk burger.

Saturday was a chill day. My mom took Bry and I to a couple of nearby sites for a relaxed day of adventure. We first went to Mission San Jose and walked around for a while looking at what there is to see there and conversing. From the mission we went to Don Edwards Wildlife Reserve. The weather was clear and wonderful, as can usually be expected. Below are pictures from Don Edwards.

To say the least, I love vacations, however short they last and however long the traveling may take. Family is what matters and family is what I love the most.

(this is a little late, but...)

Hello, snow!! Wow. Last weekend, some serious snowing happened- there's still some snow on the ground and the top of my car and such. This is what the quad looked like last Sunday, though. Sorry the pictures aren't the best- it was cold outside, so I didn't spent much time to snap them.

Poor trees- the snow weighed down their branches and some snapped overnight.

Just like home

Tonight I made dinner with home in mind. It wasn't as delicious as it would have been back home, since I'm not nearly as experienced with making food as my amazing mother is, but it turned out pretty darn good. And it made me happy because it reminded me of home. And it was relatively nutritious. =) Mmmm.

Me and my barbequing skills

My photography isn't the best, but I think I was just so excited to eat it.
Ribs, rice, and brussel sprouts.

Thank you BYU professor

Earlier today Bry made a comment about not actually having finance homework and I asked him if he was serious or just dreaming. He responded confirming the latter.

So Bry worked away tonight, super tired, trying to figure out some finance problems in preparation for a quiz. He finally decided to just take the quiz and discovered the quiz to be one simple question about what grade he would like to be assigned with the first answer reading something as follows:

"100% (Professor - recommends you pick this one".

So thank you, awesome professor, for making my husband's dream come true. =)

Thank goodness I married a smart man

Culprit #1

So the other day (Friday), Bry and I decided to do breakfast-for-dinner. So he was cooking scrambled eggs, bacon was in the oven and I made some pancake batter. Then a smoke detector in our apartment started going off. Ugh. So I run over and start fanning the smoke detector but it won't stop!! So I open up some windows and continue fanning. I decide to take out the battery and it still won't stop beeping!! What the freak kind of a smoke detector do I have?

After a few minutes we start to hear a second smoke detector going off and I feel a little better and state something along the lines of "well at least someone else has a smoke detector going off."

A moment later Bry suggests "do we have more than one smoke detector?"

Duh...

Culprit #2

Culprit #3

So we opened all of the windows in our apartment and eventually cleared out what very little smoke from our SCRAMBLED EGGS that there was.

Result: charred bacon, burnt pancake, cold scrambled eggs (because we took them off the heat but by the time we could eat them they were cold).

All I have to say, though, is thank goodness Bry was smart enough to figure out that we have more than one smoke detector, or else I would have gone crazy. Piercing beeping gets old so fast.

Love your trials

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church, aka Mormon Church but I prefer the full name of my Church since it's the one God gave it- not the one the world invented- and because it clears up -or at least should clear up- any confusion about my being Christian-- note the "Jesus Christ" part of the title). Anyway...my opening isn't actually a sentence because I got into the tangent in parentheses.... As I was saying, being a member of my church, I have often heard that we should be grateful for our trials. Sounds weird, right? Why should I be grateful about having three midterms in the same week (as is sometimes the case)? Or why should I be grateful that my computer's internet seems to be slow at the worst times? Or whatever it may be. We all face hardship- it comes in an infinite number of forms. Sometimes we see it coming (like the midterms) and sometimes we don't (like what I recently experienced).

Trials are something to learn from, though. No, they aren't fun. No, we usually don't ask for them. But YES we NEED them, YES they are intended to BLESS us; YES we almost always complain about them, and YES you should be grateful for them, as crazy as that sounds.

We don't always get to see why they happen in this life, but I have come to find that if you look for ways in which they made you stronger, in which you learned something about yourself or about others, in which they showed you something you wouldn't have otherwise seen, that after looking you see that good did come in some form. Of course, I'm not an expert and you may have had an experience that you cannot see any good in, but I guarantee that someday you will have a chance to understand.


I will provide you with an example from my own life that I feel compelled to share. I share it not for sympathy- I am now totally recovered and have been for some time. Take what you want from it- if you don't want to get anything out of this then fine, but I hope to make that hard for you if that is your intent.

Back at the end of August, I was very ill to the point of being nearly bed-ridden with fever for about a whole week. My body was extremely fatigued- a time or two I felt I could barely continue to feed myself. On a good day, I found it difficult to make the short walk to and from my mail box and found that picking my feet up the one flight of stairs to my apartment had me a little out of breath and needing to sit down. My body ached, particularly my back, which made standing for more than a short moment tiring. My nose became congested, adding to my occasional headache and to an overall weird/uncomfortable feeling.

I eventually got diagnosed and got the medication I needed that then put me on the road to recovery which was much shorter than I had anticipated.

From feeling utterly useless to feeling hope that I could heal and function normally again, was a beautiful transformation for me. Hope does something to us that little else can. It gives us energy that we didn't have before and gives us the vision to see things more for what they are rather than sluggishly dwelling in the present circumstances.

After that hope came to me, I was able to see myself improve and to see myself increase in hope and capability.

Just after recovering I was able to see the many ways in which God had blessed me; I saw the benefits of a decision I had made a few weeks prior; I saw the kind efforts of a husband who cares for me; I was reminded of the blessing of having a healthy body, and so many other things.

I was nearly 100% within a week of getting medication, which I hadn't dreamed would be the case- it was a personal miracle and I am still grateful for it to this day.

Hope is brighter than the sun

How we became us

I'm going to make a long story short- and I mean I could make this a REALLY long story. My first draft of this post was over 1300 words and that was just leading up to our first date. So I'll save you a lot of time and boredom and make this as brief as I can manage.

Bry and I met in our ward (not a hospital ward but a Church ward- meaning the assembly of people we meet with for church) in Spring of 2011. We had both just finished our first fall and winter semesters at Brigham Young University. I was interested in getting to know him from our first encounter and eventually (4 or 5 weeks into the term) he asked me out on a date.

I figured that nothing would really happen between us while I was there since I would be headed home within two weeks for the summer. However, after a great first date, great informal date, some freaking out about how much he liked me, another great date, freaking out about the possibility of a relationship (my first), realizing I was ready to be in a relationship, casual hanging out and playing card games with friends (like Rook), and him falling madly in love with me (okay, maybe not- I don't think it came that early), we held hands and talked about what we would do for summer.

We agreed to leave dating other people as an option, but neither of us did date anyone. We kept in regular contact while I was home through texting, phone conversations and facebook messaging. By the end of summer I was longing to see him in person again and when I got back to Provo we started dating, becoming officially a couple after a a couple weeks.

From there we continued to date, eventually brought up the big "m" word (marriage) and decided that we wanted to spend forever together.

Bry proposed on Leap Day (February 29th) and I accepted. Considering the time we spent discussing the possibility of being married, it took a while to finally settle in that I was going to be MARRIED. And it didn't make me freak out- it made me excited and uncertain as to what life would really be like as a married person. Throughout our engagement, I was continually shown that he was a man that I could love forever and wanted by my side.

I am so grateful every day for the decision that I made and know that I have needed him and will continue to need him. I look forward to spending forever with him. :)

Our first date 06.02.2011

Our wedding day 06.16.2012

Introduction

My name is now Mandy Bingham- used to be Anderson. I'm still getting used to saying and signing it, but it's worth getting used to because I took it from my now-husband Bryant. :) Now that I'm married, I've decided to join the trend of starting a blog. I'm hoping this blog will be interesting since it isn't only about me but about my husband as well. If you haven't been able to figure out the URL (as you probably have, but just in case you haven't), I decided that, since Bry and I both have a "y" at the end of our name (at least, he does at the end of his nickname), I would combine our names by the "y"s which also seemed fitting since we met at the Y (Brigham Young University- Provo). So I flipped my name around since "Mandyrb" seemed weirder than "Brydnam" which is pronounced "bride-nam" with a short "d" sound and a bit of emphasis on the "n" and "nam" sounding like "ham" but with an n. That's probably more explanation than you needed, but just so that we're clear on this name that isn't likely to be vocalized anyway unless you ask me in person how I decided it should be said.


 Hopefully you like this blog. If not, don't read it. For the first real post (I consider this post to be a pre-post/introductory post to actual posts), I'm hoping to type up the story of how Bry and I met- seeing as our names are the title of this blog, I figured it would be fitting. :)