I Miss. . .

• Family
• Cafe Rio
• Being close to Wal mart 
• Sleeping through the night and being able to sleep on my back
• Being able to zip up my jackets
• Wearing all my clothes
• Playing sports
• Roads wide enough for a wagon to make a U-turn (or even a regular sized car)
• Streets that are in a grid
• Andrew going to sleep before 1 a.m.
• After School Club
• Friends
• Milk that costs less than $3.50 a gallon
• USU basketball games

Luckily there are lots of things I love about living in Pittsburgh and I won't be pregnant forever-- 36 weeks yesterday :)

Goals of 1st grade Lindsay

Around the time I got married I was cleaning some of the stuff out of my old room at my parent's house and I ran across a school paper (I wish I would have kept it).  The top of the paper said "In 2007 I will graduate from Mountain Crest High School then I will. . ."  There were three lines where I was to write my goals of what to do after high school.  This is what I wrote:

1.  I will probably get a job
2.  I will probably get a car
3.  I will probably go to USU

1st grade Lindsay wasn't very committed, but I guess I've always been like that.  I don't want to set things in stone just in case.  I just don't want to disappoint myself.  I did all these things within three months of graduating.  I feel like these goals were expected of me (not necessarily going to USU, but college), but I'm glad that the people around me had the faith in me to want and expect me to go to college and have a job to be able to afford things.

I haven't made new goals in a while, but I feel like they are important to make you a better person.  Even if they are simple. I'm sure that's why the Personal Progress program has such an emphasis on goals.  I'll start working on a good list of goals, maybe I'll even post it.  That may give me more of an incentive to achieve them.

I've Missed Primary

Andrew and I are the Valiant class primary teachers.  Yes we teach all of the senior primary.  That sounds very impressive until I tell you that there are only three of them.  We've got two boys and a girl ages 9, 10, and 11.  I like this age because you can hold a real conversation with them and tease them a little.  Sometimes they don't like to sit still or listen, but I think they are funny.   We had primary program practice yesterday, the primary program next week should be pretty exciting.

At the beginning of class Andrew asked what the kids did this week and one of them said he played Super Nintendo

The other boy asked "What's that?"

The first boy said it was "a super super super super old gaming system"

Andrew and I were quick to correct him saying it wasn't THAT old.

His response was "You're right, it's not as old as Atari."

There's nothing like a 5th and 6th grader to remind you how old you really are . . . 23.  Thanks guys

Life in Pittsburgh

We have lived in Pittsburgh just over two months, we are both really liking it.

Pittsburgh is a quirky city. It is divided up into neighborhoods that have their own distinct personalities.

We live in Friendship.  It's little, so good luck finding it on the map.  It's above Shadyside.  Friendship is mostly old Victorian homes that have been split up into apartments.  Most of the neighborhoods have their own shopping areas, but Friendship is small and really close to other shopping centers, so we don't have one. Bloomfield is close to us and almost everyone is Irish, in Squirrel Hill there are a lot of Jewish people, East Liberty is low income housing and there are a lot of African Americans there.  Oakland is full of undergraduate students.  Most of our ward lives in Morningside where there are fairly cheap houses. It is very divided and a lot of times you can tell when you are in a new neighborhood because the houses or buildings change.

The roads are crazy.  They used to be old horse trails and go all sorts of directions.  Sometimes you will be going one direction and the road will change direction with out you knowing it and you will end up somewhere completely different.  There are a lot of one way roads so you can't always go where you want.  Also you could be driving on a road for a few miles and it's name changes five times.  It's very confusing.  But I can easily get to the church, Andrew's school, the grocery store, the doctor's office, and Morningside (where most of our ward is).  

Everyone here loves the Steelers

I flew here from Utah on a Sunday when the Steelers played.  Half of the people on the flight home and in the airport had on Steelers clothes and hats.  They also take popular songs and change the words so they are now Steelers songs.  Everyone here loves the Penguins also, they play hockey and apparently they are pretty good.  The baseball team is awful though, the Pirates just finished their 19th losing season in a row, that is more consecutive losing seasons than any other professional sports team (any sport), ever.  Sports are kind of a big deal here. 

I feel like I'm getting used to living in a big city and I am liking it so far.  The internet and the church make moving to a new place significantly easier.  It is nice to know that we can refer to the internet and find anything that we need.  And our ward is so great.  We've made friends quickly and there are a lot of people looking out for us.  

We've been able to do a lot of new thing and have new experiences.  We are having a good time and learning lots.  Andrew has been swamped with school lately, it's been kind of hard but he is learning a lot.  

While Andrew's been gone I have been making a new quilt for my sister, reading, cooking, going to institute, and watching movies.  

Here are some pictures of stuff we've been doing lately that isn't school.

Pittsburgh at night

Alyna came to visit us.  We didn't take so many pictures, but we had fun.

We went to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History one day
Here's a dinosaur 

This is me in the minerals, it was probably my favorite part of the Natural History Museum

We also went to the Carnegie Art Museum --
 I'm trying to figure out this modern art -- No Luck

A lady in our ward is teaching a photography class and we decided to go,
it was fun and I learned a lot

Us being models for photography class

We are having fun.  Our car is still getting fixed.  We were supposed to pick it up on Thursday, but they didn't fix the alarm system.  But the body work they did looks great.  Hopefully they will be able to fix it soon, without having to take it to the Nissan dealership.  But I am still liking the rental car.

The First Time I felt like an Adult

We are still having car problems. . . It's only been about a month.  The body work looks great, but the car alarm continues to go off.  It is also super annoying to turn it off.  The only way to do it is to unlock the trunk.  Kind of annoying.  It's also hard working with the insurance people to solve this problem because it seems unrelated to them.  But I don't understand how the alarm would suddenly break the same day I get in an accident.  I do understand that there could be people trying to scam the insurance company into doing extra work on their car, but I'm not doing that.

Another hard thing is that the insurance adjuster that we are working with knows that Andrew and I are young and it seems as though he is trying to take advantage of that.  We still have a few more things we are going to do, but getting the insurance to pay for this fix is looking more and more like a lost cause.  It's also super annoying because neither of us did anything wrong, except for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Working with these people have really made me think about the first time I was seen as more than a kid, or just a dumb college student.  Working at Bridger Elementary was one of the first times I was treated as an adult, or an equal to the teachers.  Even though I was just a part time aide, who was just out of college with a degree that had nothing to do with teaching, I felt very respected.  The teachers I worked with were so grateful for my hard work.  They were very supportive of my ideas and were very understanding when I was having problems with some of the kids.  I was never talked down to and really appreciated being viewed in such a positive light. It really is amazing how big of a difference it makes to work with people who view you as a positive contributer.  It makes me think who I'm treating inappropriately because of their age, whether it is older or younger than me.