Leaving on a Jet Plane…

On Sunday, Kevin and I booked our plane tickets to Lithuania. We are visiting Kaunas and Vilnius. Kevin went on his mission to Lithuania, so that is the main reason we chose to go Lithuania. However, as I continue to research Lithuania, I amazed by its rich history. It has many castles and museums, and while they are still trying to rebuild after living under the oppression of the Soviet Union, many of their national treasures are beginning to shine.

I am excited to go. It will be fun to spend this much time with Kevin. Plus, I haven't been outside of the country before (other than Vancouver, B.C. when I was 18 months old), so I am excited to experience a different culture. I'm not so excited about the length of the plane ride, Hawaii was long enough.

Until we go, I need to focus on getting in shape. We don't plan to rent a car, rather we are going to explore Lithuania on foot. I don't want to die on the first day, so I plan to visit the gym as often as possible.

Christmas Newsletter 2010

December 11, 2010

Dear Family & Friends,

Now that we are an official family, I guess it is time that we start participating in the tradition of a family newsletter. I've always enjoyed reading the newsletters of others, so hopefully ours is found enjoyable.

Kevin and I established our family on April 23, 2010 at the Salt Lake Temple. It was a cold and rainy day, and even snowed in Kamas where our reception was, but it was still a perfect day, and we were excited to be sealed together for all time and eternity.

We quickly fell into the routine of being newlyweds, which seems to consist of never seeing each other due to work and school. I am currently working on the postpartum floor and well-baby nursery as an RN, while Kevin attends school at LDS Business College, pursuing a transferable Associates degree in Business, and works as a Senior Account Manager at Discover Card.

We have found time to have some fun. In June we drove to Southern Utah to enjoy the scenery at Fish Lake, Capital Reef, and Arches. It was a fun break from the monotony of work and chores. Kevin also went to Rexburg for a quick trip to see friends. I unfortunately had to work. We also made a few trips up to Kamas which is where Rex and Lynette Hallam live(Megan's parents), including Kevin's first deer hunt with my dad where he shot a massive spike in the first 30 minutes of his hunt, probably less than 1 mile from my parents' house. While it isn't exactly a trophy, we have been told that it will be tasty by all and so far it is.

This summer I was called as the 1^st Counselor in our ward Young Women's Presidency. I have come to love the girls in our ward, and I am excited to get to know them better through girls' camp and youth conference. I am also excited to go to girls' camp and youth conference again. Kevin was called as a CTR 4 teacher in the primary 2 weeks ago, which he is not quite as excited about, but he is glad that he has a job finally.

In our spare time, we are trying to make a home of the house we bought last November. I spent a good portion of the summer weeding our many flower beds, and only made a dent in three of them, while Kevin has been the handyman around the house. We are both glad to be done with our apartment days, and to have our mortgage payment go towards building our net worth, rather than the net worth of an apartment owner. We are also enjoying our aquarium of about 10 adult cichlids, 3 other fish, 4 plecostomuses (sucker fishes), and lots of baby cichlids.

We hope you are all doing well and enjoying your holidays. As always we would love to hear from you, whether by phone, email, Facebook message, or even snail mail. You could also stop by our blog at meganhallam.blogspot.com to see what we are doing throughout the year.

Merry Christmas!

Love, Kevin and Megan Prause

Kevin and Megan at the Salt Lake Temple while taking our bridals, I love the swish of my dress.

Kevin and Megan on wedding day.

 The Hallams (Megan's Family)

The Prauses (Kevin's Family)

Capital Reef

Arches

 

 

La Caille

Yesterday our friends Alex and Kate were married in the Salt Lake Temple. This is the first marriage sealing I have been to besides our own. It was a cool experience.

After the ceremony and the pictures, we reconvened (I like that word.) at La Caille for the wedding luncheon. It was delectable. Before everyone arrived, the servers were passing out drinks and coconut shrimp skewers. I had some very yummy hot cider, and after trying a shrimp, I decided that they were actually kind of good. We started off our meal with a roll and salad, which were both good, but the roll was very hard on the outside, which made it difficult to follow the rules of etiquette while eating it. (I finally gave us and just buttered it and picked it up, everyone else at our table did as well.) For my main course, I had a chicken dish. It was to die for. I have never had such tender chicken before. It was almost like eating fish because it just fell apart in your mouth. It tasted good too. My main dish also included sun-dried tomatoes, which I have never had before. I had expected them to be kind of dry, but they were still quite juicy. To top it off, we had a tart, brownie, and crème brulee. All were very yummy, and I have rediscovered that I like burnt sugar, although the crème brulee tasted much better than my elementary school science experiments which resulted in burnt sugar. All in all, it was amazing, and I hope I can find some way to get another free dinner there. I am pretty sure that neither Kevin nor I want to pay that much for dinner.

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

It's been a bit since I have updated, but here are some pictures I took on 11/29/10.
After the blizzard (not "the blizzard of the century", but the heavy snowfall a few days later):

  Our Christmas decorations, and yes, I know they are kind of pitiful and sparse:

 I'm pretty sure that I got this Snowman as a White Elephant gift at a work party.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, Kevin and I went to my Aunt Marlene's in Talmage. We left for Kamas Wednesday after Kevin got off work, and then we went out to Talmage Thursday. This is the first time that Kevin has been to Thanksgiving with us, and pretty much the first major family dinner with my mom's family.

It was pretty crazy. Three of my cousins were there with their families, so it was a tight fit. Some of the kids had to eat in the kitchen because we did not have enough room around the main table in the living room. Even at that, we kept jabbing each other with our elbows.

After dinner we picked up a recliner from my Uncle Weldon in Duchesne for my mom. It used to be my Grandma Siler's, but after 20 years, it was still in good shape, although very 80's-ish in color. It will be very good for my mom to get a "new" chair since hers has been falling apart since I was in high school.

Yesterday, Kevin helped my mom with some electrical issues at the barn, so we got a late start back home, but all in all it was a good trip. It was fun to be with family for Thanskgiving, rather than with my coworkers and patients.

Newest Addition

Last Sunday, I was craving ice cream. I kept telling myself to ignore the cravings because ice cream makes me sick since I am lactose intolerant, but they would not go away. Finally around 7:30ish, I decided to give into the cravings and have a little bit of ice cream. When I opened the carton up to dish it up, the ice cream was soup-like. I quickly felt the ice packs, and they were melted as well. After grabbing Kevin to confirm my findings, we came to the conclusion that our fridge was dead. We had inherited it with the house, and I think it was the original fridge, so it was almost ten years old.

We grabbed all of our freezer stuff, and put it in our downstairs freezer. All of the fridge stuff was taken to Kevin's parents' house. We ended up saving most of our food, but some of the stuff we just threw away because it was old, almost gone, or cheap (eggs). That was about all we could do Sunday night, so I went to bed disappointed that I could not take my normal lunch to work since it requires refrigeration, but thank goodness for peanut butter and honey sandwiches and cans of fruit, otherwise I may have not been able to eat. (It is hard to guess when you are in the nursery whether you will have time to go downstairs for food, or if the nursery is going to be full when it is lunchtime, or if somebody can relieve you for lunch.)

Monday after I go off work, Kevin and I went to Lowes and found our new fridge. It is a stainless steel side-by-side with ice maker. It is bigger than our previous fridge and much nicer too. Plus, it hasn't been through two previous families, one of which may have possibly not believed in cleaning.

Here is a picture:

Favorite Song

This week has been kind of boring. The only exciting thing was going on a "shopping spree" on Monday. The rest of the week has just been a combination of work at the hospital and work at home, with visiting teaching, Young Womens, and a baby shower thrown in.

A few months ago, a friend from high school posted a list of blog topics you are supposed to blog on everyday for a month. I don't plan on doing that, mostly because I don't blog everyday, but I plan to write on the topics when I don't have something better to blog on. Some of the things are really random and not that important, but they are kind of fun.

To start us off, my favorite song. This is actually kind of hard because I like so many different types of music and there are songs in each genre that I like a lot, plus favorite songs change as a new and better one comes out. So as a cop out, I will go by genre.

Country: I love Taylor Swift. Every song she sings seems to apply to a certain part of my life. However, my favorite song is probably "Love Story."

Pop Music: This is harder because there is such a variety. One song that I like a lot because of the music is "Battlefield" by Jordin Sparks. I like her music a lot. "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield is another favorite because of the positive message that life is what you make of it.

Classical Music: Yes, I like classical music. I think it is very soothing. My current favorite composer is Chopin. I just wish I could play the piano well enough to play his pieces. I like the "Fanfare for the Common Man" by Aaron Copland as well. When I hear it, I picture myself doing some great thing like winning a gold medal in the Olympics. However, I think my all-time favorite is the "1812 Overture" by Tchaikovsky. You can go wrong when cannons are written into the score.

Inspiration/Non-Hymn: "Come, Thou Fount" is one of my favorite songs ever (especially the Mo-Tab and BYU choirs version). I wish they hadn't removed it from the hymnbook, although I don't know too many wards that could pull it off as well as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Favorite Hymn: "Be Still, My Soul" helped me through the last couple years of college. I was so dramatic, but at the time I didn't know how I was ever going to do everything on my plate. I had this song on my laptop, and every time that I was at the end of my rope, I would listen to it and be reminded that the Savior is close by and willing to help us through our trials if we just ask for His help. All of the hymns are amazing, but this one has had the most impact on me.