November, December, and the Big News!!!

Most of November involved doing school, and work, and school, and work, and more school, and more work, and then Thanksgiving! Which was a very nice break indeed. We spent Thanksgiving Day with Luke's family at his house where we dined on fine china!! Certainly a first for me. :) It was too much fun! Luke and I had decided that we'd better tell our parents our big news, a.k.a., that I'm PREGNANT!!! over the break, as I was throwing up and feeling rather sick, and things like that don't go unnoticed. So we prepared a little frame for his parents that said, "Grandbaby Perkins coming Summer 2010!!!" and at the end of the night Luke brought it upstairs and handed it to his dad. His dad told mom Perkins to come see, and by that time there was enough sly smiling going on that Lauren caught on and immediately said, "I knew it!!" Ha ha ha! It was fun. Everyone was so nice and excited about it.

Then we trekked over to my parent's house to stay the night and spend the next day with my fam. We waited for Heidi and Devin to arrive, then made everyone haul themselves upstairs and away from their movie, on the pretext of coming up to see Heidi and Devin and their cute kittens they were tending. They grumbled, but they came. After allowing everyone to greet and talk for just a minute we handed my mom a gift bag saying we got her something. Inside was a baby's onesie that said, "What happens at Grandma's, stays at Grandma's." Too cute! And this will be my mom's first grandchild, so we thought it was appropriate. :) Well, she started opening it and hadn't even gotten it all the way out of the bag when she screamed, "Shut up you stupid idiot!! Are you serious???" Ha ha ha ha ha! Classic mom. The screaming continued, and Heidi quickly realized what was going on and immediately starts screaming and bawling and saying, "Oh my gosh!!!" and then Samantha catches on as well and starts screaming and crying too, and they all mob me in a huge hug. Ha ha ha! My dad, Ronny, Devin, and the boys all realized what was going on sometime during the screaming, and they all gave me and Luke hugs too. And of course immediately afterward mom has gathered three books and some pregnancy tea for me, and Heidi is suggesting a gel she knows about that helps with stomach tone and stretch marks, and we're all talking like crazy about what's going on. Needless to say, the movie did not continue until quite a while after that, and by that point Luke and I were tuckered out so we went to bed with no more ado.

The next day was spent decorating the house for Christmas and then we all went out to eat and to see New Moon afterward. What a disappointment! Not that my expectations were high. They weren't. Which makes it all the worse that it still managed to disappoint me! In my opinion it was a worse job than Twilight. They may have had better special effects (admittedly, the wolves turned out well) but the script was horrifying, the makeup overdone to the point of being clownish, and the acting sadly without emotion or variation of any kind. Add to that the unbelievably silly lines Jacob kept spouting throughout, and you have a disaster of a movie. Honestly, they could/can do so much better!!! Why they fail is beyond me.

At any rate, we all swallowed that and of course will be attending Eclipse at the same time next year. No badly made movie can stop our tradition, no sir! Ha!

The next day we had a multi-birthday celebration at Luke's house for James, Sarah, Luke, Dad Perkins, and Lauren. We had a delicious lunch, opened presents, went and took the traditional Santa picture, played some kickball, and finished with a delectable cake and cupcakes, compliments of Mom Perkins and Dippidee's respectively. Having gotten our fill of good food, family, and treats, we headed back home to resume the battle against failing school.

Remarkably, we've come out quite well. Luke, of course, will have managed a much better gpa than I, but I like to use all kinds of excuses like, "Well it's my senior year" and "I'm really not as good at my major as everyone else" and, of course, "I am pregnant." Ha ha ha! Nevertheless, with finals done for Luke and halfway through for myself, I think we haven't done half bad.

The other big news, besides the little blueberry that's growing inside me of course, is that Heidi and Devin were sealed!! On December 12, exactly a year from their marriage. Luke and I, as well as my parents and Devin's parents got to go through the session with them at the Salt Lake Temple, and they even asked Luke and I to be the witness couple! That was so neat! I got to sit right by Heidi the whole time. Afterward we went straight to the sealing room, where Devin's sister and her husband joined us, and they were sealed. It was so beautiful and wonderful! I'm extremely happy for them both.

After the sealing we went to eat at Tucano's (always a pleasure) and then Luke and I strolled around Temple Square for a moment looking at some of the lights, and caught the first half of the Tabernacle Choir's Christmas Concert in the tabernacle that was going on across the street at the conference center. We left early in order to avoid traffic, but I imagine the rest was quite beautiful.

So there's the update! I will add pictures as soon as I have them, and this post shall be complete.

Halloween and All Saints' Day

Ok, I know this is late, but we did so many fun things for Halloween this year that I definitely need to post!


First off we carved pumpkins at Sarah's house. Luke drew a witch flying in the light of the moon over a village on my pumpkin for me to carve, and did a 3-D melty face on his. Andy's was similar, and he outlined a spooky forest one for Amory. Dad used a drill to make his classic pumpkin, and James did one of a bat, neglecting to scrape the insides clean. Finally, Caleb graced his pumpkin with a portrait of our current president, Mr. Obama. We had a delicious dinner of soups and Sarah's incredible french bread, as well as a pie-eating contest. If Luke and I had been able to stay we would have been able to do a donut-on-a-string eating contest as well!


Friday night before Halloween Luke and I attended Joel and Leah Cooke's Halloween party. There was fun food, a fancily decorated cake by Joel, and a costume contest which Luke won. He was Jack the Pumpkin King from The Nightmare Before Christmas and I was his co-star Sally. Both of our costumes were home-made, thanks to the help of Mom Perkins, and it must be admitted that we looked awesome! Ha ha ha!

The next morning we had family pictures with the Wright fam. A weekend or so before we had tried gathering on the porch and taking our own family picture by using the timer. After about 15 or so pictures we decided that it was going to take a professional to get us all smiling and not looking awkward at the same m0ment. So Saturday morning we headed over to Masterpiece Images who shot both mine and Heidi's weddings, and have always done a masterful job. All of us managed to clean up nice, so I expect decent results.

That night we had a murder mystery party hosted by Heidi and Devin at my parent's house, and it turned out to be so much fun! The game itself was a little silly. Only about three characters had anything to do with the murder, the rest were just lookers-on. Despite that, the dinner (chicken cordon bleu) was fantastic and everyone's costumes were too much fun! After the game was over we also ended up playing a few fun games, namely Zoom Zoom ERP, and Vikings and Rowers. The first one is fairly tame, you just have to keep up with which direction the zoom is going. The second, however, gets pretty rowdy. Vikings are yelling and making silly faces while rowers are rowing for dear life and grunting all the while. We called on everyone to come and play, and eventually got them all, except for Dad Perkins who eluded us by slipping out to take a little stroll. Next time, Dad. Ha ha ha!

We were all tired and hoarse afterward, and Heidi couldn't even unwind a balloon from our ceiling fan (which had gotten there thanks to Kaden's efforts) without her arms shaking. Needless to say, we were all exhausted the next day and were exceedingly grateful for Daylight Savings giving us an extra hour.

Luke and I especially, since we had to attend Mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake that morning. My British Literature teacher assigned everyone in my class to go to this particular Mass because it was a high holiday--All Saints' Day.


First of all, I don't know that I've ever heard such a beautiful, angelic choir in all my life. They are made up of young kids that are trained at their local Catholic school. The acoustics in the cathedral were incredible, and the organ was huge. It was so cool! The service itself was also an interesting experience. It's certainly different from an LDS Sacrament Meeting, and yet there are many similarities. For instance, we started off by singing a familiar hymn found in the LDS hymnbook. They also read from the scriptures and told a story (called a homily) about a saint they recently canonized for his service to lepers in Hawaii in the 19th century.

After the service they offered tours of the cathedral, and the man who gave it to us turned out to be very knowledgeable about it, especially all the art and stained glass windows. He himself was interesting because he had converted to Catholicism about five years previous from being LDS. When he realized that a few of us in the tour were LDS he explained the different things so as to cast light on some of the misunderstandings we typically have about the Catholic faith. Overall it was a really interesting day, and we fully intend to go back some time, especially if the choir has a christmas concert.

Sorry this post currently has no pictures, but it will as soon as I can get them!

October First!!!

My family has a happy-making tradition on October first that I am definitely going to continue in my own household--once college is no longer consuming every ounce of my life.

On this day my mom sends everyone off to work and school and then pulls out her magic. She takes down all the normal decorations and brings out the autumn and Halloween ones, then bakes cinnamon rolls right before everyone gets home from school. It was so much fun coming home from school all those years to the smell of the oven-fresh cinnamon rolls and the sight of the holidays. It was always a surprise, because we always forgot when it was coming! But Mom never did. Thank you mom! We love you so much!

Also, I saw some pictures posted on my cousin's facebook page of the shower we had for her new sister-in-law last weekend, so I thought I'd steal them and put them here. Ha ha!

First off, a picture of the whole group of us. We're at my aunt Patty's house (my mom's sister). It's her son Chad who is marrying Amanda. She is sitting on the second row, second to the left in the gray shirt, with her mom on her right, and my grandma on her left. My sister Samantha is sitting in the very front, in all her youthful beauty, my mom is the blond in the very back, second in from the left, and Heidi and I are on what appears to be the third row, me being the one in pink with reddish hair, Heidi being the one in gray with dark brown hair. We are surrounded by several, though certainly not all, of my aunts and female cousins on the Lewis side, as well as some of Amanda's friends. Now that we're all introduced, let's move on.



This next picture is Samantha and my cousin Danielle.


And finally me and Heidi. Aren't we just cute?

Also, we split the group in two and had a competition to design the most fashionable wedding gown out of toilet paper we could, and Amanda got to choose the winner. Samantha, Heidi, and I were all in one group, mom was in the other. Despite the fact that we three sisters basically took over designing the gown from everyone else, Amanda chose the other groups'. We're still bitter. Here she is with the two models. Ours is on the left, the other groups' is on the right.


Okay, so maybe it looks a little "Prom" instead of "Wedding." Still, we made that headband and flower out of toilet paper. The other group cheated and made their bouquet out of doilies and fower petals that were on the table. Apparently, integrity will have to take one for the team this time.

No Impact Man

I just read an article about a man named Colin Beavan who, with his wife and 2 yr. old daughter, decided to go completely green for a year and make no impact on the environment. That meant, "no elevators, no electricity, no disposable diapers, no food grown more than 250 miles from home, no TV, no takeout, no beauty products, and no washing machine," to name a few. He biked to work while his wife used a push-scooter, and after the year was up they had made some very interesting discoveries.

They saved money, "cutting [their] discretionary expenses by at least 50%—often more." Beavan's wife had this to say about their new lifestyle and diet, "I had long been too tired—from not working out—to get to the gym to work out. But by exchanging my time on the subway for a self-propelled commute, I dropped 10 pounds; my new locavore diet didn't hurt either. I had the energy of a supermom in my slacker mom's body. My insomnia evaporated—the scooter was No Impact Ambien. My palate also began changing. The local food, though heavy on the parsnips, began to taste delicious. Three months in, I started getting through the day without the usual afternoon Dunkin' Donuts high followed by the crash. The pastry mania and shame hangovers were gone. My pre-diabetic condition vanished."

She also talks about the newfound peace of coming home to a place devoid of electricity: no lights, TV, or cell phones. Instead of feeling deprived, she says, "the truth is that when I opened the door to the No Impact house at night, I felt like I was walking into a vacation. The days felt like they lasted forever."

I was so excited when I read this article. Although it's hard to imagine going as radically green as this family did, I want to make a goal to try it. Both the Beavans testify of the happiness and good health they enjoyed as they made the changes to their high-consumption, New York City lifestyles. And, most importantly, they talked about how it gave them more time to be together as a family. What better priority could you have?

Colin Beavan keeps a blog and has written a book about their experience. For more information, visit: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/.

Schooltime Again

Well, summer is officially over and school has begun for both of us. We finished off our last days/weeks of freedom by going to Bear Lake with the Perkins fam and had a really great time. Luke almost got to ride on a jet-ski for the first time too--until it broke. Ha ha! Better luck next year, I guess.

This semester of school is going to be crazy. Luke and I get up at 6am, he leaves around 6:30, works until 1:30pm, gets to his class at the U of U which starts at 3pm, goes to that one and the next one and finishes at 9, then heads home and arrives around 10:30 or 11. So much for being married. We never see each other! Ha ha ha! Although that schedule only happens Mondays and Wednesdays, Tuesday Thursday and Friday he gets home by 6:30, which is much nicer. His classes are drawing, sculpture, an art lecture class, and geography (which he takes online). He is appreciating his teachers at the U SOOOOO MUCH!!! The contrast between this school and UVU is stark. Thank goodness he's finally at the right school and going into the right major. Perhaps we'll finally make some headway. :)

My schedule and classes are similar, though not so extreme. I work in the mornings until 1 pm and then go to four of my classes on Monday Wednesday Fridays and the other one on Tuesday and Thursday. Monday and Wednesday I get home around 7pm, and Tuesday and Thursdays it's more like 4pm. I'm actually happy to get home later on Mondays and Wednesdays so I don't have to sit at home alone for so long. I'm taking British Literature from the beginning to 1500 a.d., American Literature from 1865-1914, History from the beginning to 1500 a.d., Biology 100, and The Bible as Literature. So far I'm enjoying all of them.

We've both been surprised at how not-too-difficult our schedules are going. Maybe it's because we've only been doing it for two weeks and it will get harder later, but hopefully not. This is the last year we'll have to do such acrobatics to make everything work, because I shall graduate in the spring and then we can move to Salt Lake and be close to everything for Luke. Hooray!! It doesn't seem like it can get here fast enough.

Other news is that Luke found two baby kittens and a mom cat living in our backyard! He came and told me and we went to see them. They have cream colored coats and brown faces, tails, and paws, with blue eyes. They look just like Persians! They are so beautiful! However, mom wasn't too happy we found her hideout, so she moved them to a new location. We're putting out food for them and hoping they'll move back so we can trap them and take them to get spayed/neutered. We might even be able to domesticate the kittens and find homes for them! Apparently the best thing you can do for feral cats is to take them to get neutered (the humane society will sometimes do it for free) and then release them back to their homes. That way they won't just go to a shelter to be euthanized, but they also won't be mass-producing and causing major problems. If you find kittens they can be tamed and placed in homes. I really hope we can do that for these little babies. They would have much better lives living with families than trying to survive in the wild.

Last of all we had a dinner with Amanda and her husband Tim, as well as Britney! This was only the second time we've been able to see her since she's been home, and it was really nice. Hopefully we'll be able to continue doing fun things like that with friends throughout the semester. We'll probably have to restrict it to Sundays though, Saturday being entirely reserved for homework. :)

San Diego, Our Anniversary, and More

This post is months late in coming, but better late than never, right?

At the beginning of June Luke and I went with my side of the fam to San Diego for a fun family vacation. We got to go to Sea World, Wild Animal Kingdom, California Adventure, San Diego Temple grounds, and the Beach. It was so much fun! Personally, Sea World was my favorite. I loved all the cute shows they did with otters, sea lions, seals, walruses, dolphins, and of course Shamu the Killer Whale!!!

















My favorite ride at California Adventure was Soarin' over California, by far. You felt like you were in the movie screen, like your feet were going to get wet while soaring over the ocean. It was incredible! If that's the future of movies and movie theatres, bring it on. Right afterward we went on the Tower of Terror, which for me was a big mistake. Rides in general are not my favorite thing, mostly because I don't like the dropping feeling in my stomach. So why did I go on the Tower of Terror, a ride that consists entirely of being dropped, raised, and dropped again? I have only one reply--Peer Pressure. The age-old evil of our times. ;)

Anyway, that kind of ruined the rest of the day for me and I opted not to go on anymore rides except for the Brother Bear water one. Me + Water Parks = Love, Happiness, Joy, Laughter. Me + Theme Parks = Nausea, Convulsions, Crying, Hatred.

Wild Animal Kingdom was cool to see. We got there just before it was closing, so the only thing we got to do was go on the African Safari. It was a lot like the zoo, only much, much bigger, so you don't feel like reporting animal abuse because of the tiny enclosures. The only down side is that the animals were further away and harder to see in general. It looked like there were a lot of other cool/fun things to do there, but we missed them.


The San Diego Temple is just beautiful. We went to see it on the Sunday we were there and Ashton and Kaden had a hey-day taking tons of pictures. I would love to go inside sometime and see what it's like.











Finally, the beach. The beach was the beach. Sun, surf, sand, and much relaxation while lounging on towels. All of us were pretty tuckered out, so we spent most of our time sunbathing, but Ashton and Kaden enjoyed running in the waves and playing with seaweed.





One of the best parts of the whole trip was just going swimming at the hotel! We went two of the nights we were there, Once with Ashton and Kaden and once with Heidi and Devin. It was so much fun!

The weekend after we got home from San Diego was Luke and I's first anniversary. We decided to stay at home and have a nice evening together, since we had just gotten back from a fun trip. We watched our wedding videos and then read the letters we had written to one another. Now I know why my mom always cries when she gets her letter from my dad on Christmas morning. :) After that we went and got frosties from Wendy's, and watched Quest for Camelot, which ended up being a lot more for little kids than I remembered, and Luke fell asleep. Ha ha ha!

Since then the summer has disappeared! Here we were at the beginning, so happy to have a break from school, and now we are just weeks from starting again! Good Grief! Some of the other fun things we have done include hiking Adam's Canyon and having a barbecue with my family for the Fourth of July, going swimming with Luke's family at Herriman's perfect little reservoir, having dinner and game nights with friends, having a barbecue with Caleb and Lauren on the 24th, trying to hike Stewart Falls but not being able to find it (which I blame entirely on the fact that we were with Heidi and Devin. Ha ha! We always get lost when the four of us are together), and so hiking to Bridal Veil Falls instead, and generally having lots of fun.

Well, that's it for the update. We have a few more fun adventures planned for August, and then the summer will be over and school will be upon us again! Luke is actually getting really excited for it. I'm starting to get somewhat excited, but my two unfinished internet courses are making it a little difficult to want five other classes to begin. Ha ha!

We're in Business!!!

Good news!!!!!!! Luke got a job!!!!! Hooray! He'll be working at a warehouse in Sandy full time over the summer, and his first day is on Tuesday. Heavenly Father has been so good to us! I'm so grateful that he didn't make us wait any longer. Now we can save, save, save!!!!!!