Updated...

Hi! So I just wanted to let everyone know that I have updated my website "Pics by Britt" (ya it's been awhile). Click here to check it out! Thanks!!

Awh, what an AMAZING day!

I think Memorial Day was one of the best days I have had in a long time! Everything about the day from when I woke up to when I went to bed was amazing! I was definitely spoiled!

Since Matt started working graveyard we haven't been able to sleep in the same bed at the same time and it bites! I love cuddling with him and just having him close and I have missed it like crazy! Also since Matt is awake in the middle of the night he sleeps during the day and so it gives me a lot of spare time during the day. Usually I am working while Matt's sleeping so it's not too bad but on Saturday's and Sunday's I find myself trying to think of something to do while Matt is sleeping (not that I am totally dependent on Matt to give me something fun to do, it just helps a lot!).

Well on Monday Matt stayed up all day! When I got up Monday morning I asked Matt if he was going to go to bed and he said he took a nap while I was sleeping so he could stay up all day with me. I can't tell you how freakin excited and happy I was to hear this. It made my day! Actually spending a whole day with Matt has been so rare, just having this time with him was such a blessing. Monday morning we lounged around until about 11am, played a little Wii, made some yummy breakfast, and finally got ready for the day. We decided to go visit my grandparents graves at the Provo Cemetery, the day before we got some flowers and I was excited to take them to the cemetery. Once we got there I couldn't believe how many people were there. It was a little rainy and cloudy out but that didn't seem to stop anyone from visiting their departed loved ones. We took the flowers to their graves and took a moment to reflect. I am so grateful for my grandparents and all their love, I am so grateful Matt had the opportunity to meet my Grandpa. I am so thankful I will be able to be reunited with them again!

As we were getting ready to leave we got a call from my mom asking if we wanted to have lunch with them at the Olive Garden, we jumped at the opportunity! We met up with the family and had some yummy pasta! It was delicious! After that we stopped by the Mall for a minute, just browsed around, and then after that everyone came over to check out our new place. It was nice being able to show off our little apartment, makes all that cleaning well worth it! After that Matt and I went over to Barnes and Noble to see if there were any new interesting books out, after that we went over to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get a bed skirt (aka dust cover) and I tell you if I had a little extra cash I would go crazy there, I love it!

After the shopping we went back home and crashed! Matt was so exhausted for staying up all day he went right to bed and I decided to stay up a little and get some yummy watermelon we bought the day before. I finally got to bed and instead of Matt getting up to spend the night staying awake to stay on his graveyard schedule he slept all night next to me and it was so wonderful!

Overall it was an amazing day, spending time with Matt is the greatest thing in the world and I can't wait until we take off to California next month and get to spend the whole weekend together! I hope your Memorial Day was just as good and you got to have a nice relaxing day!

"Perhaps, they are not stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy." - Eskimo legend

Ever since I was young Memorial Day has always been a day in my family for remembering and paying honor to our loved ones that have passed away (it only makes sense). We have always visited their grave sites and this year I plan on keeping the tradition alive. I am planning on visiting my Grandma's and Grandpa's graves and honoring them and all they have done for me. Sadly I lost both my Grandparents on my father's side and Grandma's on my mother's side (my mom's mother died when she was really young and my Grandpa remarried the only Grandma that I knew).
It's so sad to have these amazing people in my life gone. I was especially close to my Grandparents on my father's side. I lived with Grandma and Grandpa Bergera ever since I graduated up until I was 20 and I have become so close to them. My Grandma died in 2004 and it was the one of the hardest things to go through. I love my Grandma so much and I miss her so much. I am so thankful that as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints I know about the plan of salvation and that I can see my Grandma again. Those words never meant as much as when I lost my Grandma. My Grandpa Bergera who is such an amazing man who I will always strive to be like passed away this January unexpectedly and I still can't believe he is gone. I miss Grandpa so much and can't wait to see both him and my Grandma one day. I never knew my mom's mother but I can tell by stories that she was a wonderful lady and I can't wait to meet her in heaven one day. And my Grandma Cleo who my mom's father married after my mom's mother died is a wonderful lady as well and was always an amazing Grandma to me, I know she smiling down from heaven at how close her family has become.
I know I was very blessed to have such amazing Grandparents that would do anything for me. They have shown such unbelievable love towards me and I can't wait to be with them again. I can't imagine more self-less, caring, kind, loving, gracious, wonderful people as my Grandparents. I hope they know how much I love them! I look forward to showing them my love this Memorial Day and honoring them as best I can.

One eye down, one more eye to go!

It feels so good having Matt's eye surgery over! Matt went in yesterday to have his eye surgery and after hearing about what they did I think the word "procedure" fits a little better (plus surgery just sounds so scary). I think I would compare it more to getting lasik or something similar because it's was about an hour, they stuck a laser in his eye, and he is was done. The worst part was that they had to numb his eye (ya that sounds crazy huh?!) so they took and put a needle in his eye to numb it and Matt said it was the worse pain he has ever felt, I felt so bad for him. After the whole procedure was done his eye was really swollen and he couldn't even open it.

By about midnight last night he could open his eye but he just couldn't see anything out of it. When I left to come to work this morning at about 6:40am he said he could see a little bit out of the eye it was just really blurry, hopefully after he gets some rest today it will get better. The doctor only did the procedure to the left eye because it was damaged the worse but he would like to do it to the other just as a preventative. Matt is thinking he may need a little rest in-between painful eye shots that put him in tears (I wasn't there thank goodness or I might have lost it too ) but I do know the doctor wants to get on it fast just to be safe. He will go in next week for a follow up so I hope the procedure did everything it was suppose to and he wont need to go back for his left eye. I am just glad things went so well and Matt was in such a good mood last night considering he did just have a needle in his eye.

I am also so grateful for the new technology we have and amazing doctors that have the ability to do things that I couldn't even imagine doing! I am also so grateful for all the support from family and friends and their many many prayers. Thanks everybody!

Here are a few pictures I found about Diabetic Retinopathy for more info visit this link: diabetic-retinopathy-surgery:

(Crazy huh?! Matt's eye wasn't this bad but still so crazy to think about!)

(This is showing how the laser "dries up" the localized swelling")

and finally...

(a fun photo showing how they stick a needle into the eyeball...gross!)

Home Sweet Home

Well the time has finally come and we are all moved in! After countless trips hauling boxes from our old place to the new apartment and many many hours of unpacking we are officially moved in and it feels good! I will try to take some pictures and post them but I think our apartment looks really cute! We have a couple misc. items back at the old house we still need to grab, we still need to buy a couple misc. items (kitchen trash can, new shower head, rugs for the bathroom, etc.), and hang up a couple pictures here and there but besides that all the boxes have been unpacked and our little apartment is starting to look more and more like a home. I thought it would take longer to get everything unpacked but this last Saturday found me unpacking like crazy and we got it all done! It's been wonderful living at my Grandpa's house these last few months and all the perks of that home but I really love our new place and just can't believe how quickly Matt and I have adapted to it and made it our own. We were really blessed to find such a nice place, it's a good relief to some hectic months.

Oh and on a side-note Matt has an interview today! Matt is currently working as an Assistant Manager at Wal-Mart but his hours have been so crazy lately (he was transfered to graveyard with zero notice and for any period of time) not to mention other incidents that need not be mentioned (the fact that we planned a vacation down to Moab last month and last minute they told him he had to work...ok I guess it had to be mentioned) needless to say we have been looking for another job for Matt with more stable hours (9-6 would be awesome) and just an all aorund better atmosphere for him espeically when he goes back to school. So far nothing has turned but we are keeping hopeful. His interview today is with Wells Fargo for a teller position. Matt has always liked banking and would love to go into it for a career so though a teller is a small position I think it could have great potiental. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for him!

Just to end I will say things are going a lot better then my previous post. I am trying to be more optismistic about things and not so gloomy. Matt does have his surgery today, I will let you know how it goes. Thanks for all the love and concern, you guys are the best!

paragraphs...

As many of you may or may not notice I do not like using new paragraphs. I think my last post was one of the first ones where I actually used paragraphs (and even then I don't know if I did it correctly). I just never know when to make a new one. I feel like my whole post is about the same thing so it should all be in the same paragraph but then I start seeing these MASSIVE paragraphs and I know that doesn't look right. I do want to be somewhat grammatically correct so if you have any tips for someone who is fearful the dreaded paragraph please let me know!

Moving Day # 3...why do bad things happen all at once?

So close but so far away! That's how I feel right now. We have moved everything over to our new place except food and clothes...the two things I am dreading the most! We don't have a lot of food just a lot of cans which equals heavy boxes which equals my back hurting and just started getting the ache out of my back. Also I HATE hanging up clothes and since all our clothes that we still need to bring over are all hanging up I will have to take them all down, stick them in bags, and take them to the new place...fast forward to the new place where I will be taking them out of the bags and hanging them back up, can I just say BLAH! As you may notice I am not as positive and up-beat about the whole moving thing as I was in the first post. I am so tired of moving and driving back and forth and back and forth, luckily I think we only have one more trip to the old place and we will be done but it just seems like this whole moving thing is taking WAY too long! I think my negativity is partly because of how stinky my birthday was on Tuesday and it's just leaving me in a bad mood.
Tuesday was my birthday and I knew that it wouldn't be way exciting since we are in the middle of moving and Matt is working graveyards so he would be trying to sleep all day but things just kept going from bad to worse. I hope Matt doesn't mind that I post this but he went in to 2 different Doctors on Tuesday and both weren't the best visits. First off Matt's eye has been bothering him for about a week I would say, he has a blurry spot in his vision so he went to our local eye doctor to find out what it was. Well the doctor told him that he broke a blood vessel in the back of his eye and he would need to go to a specialist. So come Tuesday morning at 9 o'clock (when he is suppose to be sleeping) he went in and the specialist told him it was a condition called DiabeticRetinopathy. Matt is diabetic but I wasn't even aware of this, after some research I found out that Diabetic Retinopathy is the most common diabetic eye disease and a leading cause of blindness in American adults. It is caused by changes in the blood vessels of the retina. Talk about scary!! The doctor informed Matt that he would need to get eye surgery and that since they caught it soon enough he should be fine. It's still so scary to think about. I am trying to not over think or over dramatize it and just be relaxed and know that family and friends are praying for him and I need to put my trust and faith in the Lord. Matt goes in on Tuesday (the 20th) for his first laser eye surgery. The surgery is a "Same Day Surgery" he goes in at 4pm and it will roughly last an hour. Any prayers are definitely appreciated!
Well I did say he went to two doctors, later that day he went to the dentist because his jaw has been hurting him, well they decided that a nerve had been damaged and they proceeded with a root canal. Needless to say once I got home Matt was pretty out of it from the root canal and having been up all day when he should have been sleeping. I felt bad waking him up so I went up to our old place and packed up some more things. When I got back Matt was still so out of it, I was happy he was getting rest but I have to admit I was a little disappointed my birthday was such a dud. Matt felt so bad afterwards, he told me he was going to take me out to eat and to the mall to do some shopping but he was just too tired. Matt really is a sweetie and always taking care of me, it felt good to take care of him this time.
So yesterday before Matt had to got to work we started organizing our boxes and though I really didn't want to at first (I was still in my bad mood phase) it actually was really nice to get things moved around and start to see our new place take shape. I hope I can get out of this bad mood soon and start to realize that I really do have a lot of blessings in my life. Whenever I am feeling like life is too overwhelming and there are just too many trails to bear I like to read D&C122. I love how reading the scriptures can help us with anything we are experiencing and how it can help us grow close to the Lord. I know I will get out of this stupor soon, sometimes it just takes a bad experience to make you so much more grateful for the good ones!

Moving Day # 2...are we done yet?

Well it's our second day of moving and all I can say is I am exhausted! Yesterday we picked up the uhaul and moved all our "big/heavy" stuff with the help of my Dad. We moved couches, tables, desks, beds, dresser drawers, and etc. It was a long day but we got it done! After our first load we were going to go back and get all our small stuff but we decided to get a bite first. We were so hungry and tired and worn out getting some food was just what we needed. When we got back to the house we decided to take a quick power nap to regain some of our energy for the night ahead but our quick one hour power nap turned into three hours and we woke up at about 11pm (oops). Matt, who is working graveyard right now and use to being up all night, decided to let me sleep while he packed up the rest of our stuff. Have I ever said how freakin AMAZING my hubby is? Well he is! He got all our stuff except clothes and food packed up in the truck and ready to go, what a sweetie!! I have to be to work by 7am so we needed to be on the road bright and early (ok so it really wasn't all that bright out but you know what I mean). We got up at 4am (ugh) and were on the road about 4:45am. We got all our stuff out of the uhaul and into the apartment, returned the truck, drove Matt back up to AF, and got me to work by 7am with 5 minutes to spare! (Phew!) I think tonight after some birthday festivities (yes today is my birthday...lol) we are going to try to get the rest of our clothes and food packed up and be officially moved out! We still need to do a little cleaning at the condo and make sure we packed everything we wanted, but can I just say it feels sooo good to have the bulk of our stuff moved. Now hopefully we wont be moving anytime soon!

Mother's Day...just a little belated

Yes Mother's Day was Sunday and so I am a little late positing this but I thought I would still take a moment to thank the two Mom's in Matt and my life!

Mom # 1...My Mom's name is Janet and I have to tell you she is amazing! She is one of the strongest ladies I know and I love her to death! She has always been a strong influence to me especially in the gospel with good values and examples I hold dear to. In honor of Mother's Day Matt and I went down to her house and we made yummy hamburgers, pasta salad, and root beer floats! It was good just spending time together as a family and paying tribute to our Mom! The day before Mother's Day was my Mom's birthday so I went down and spent the day with her. We did a little shopping for the new apartment, made some cute new pillows, and later that night my sister, her hubby, my Mom and I went out to eat at Los Hermanos, muy delicioso! I just wanted to make sure my Mom knows how much I love her and how grateful I am for her!!

Mom # 2...When I got married to Matt I instantly became apart of a whole new family, the DeGriselles's! Matt's Mom Sharon has been a wonderful Mom to me these last two years! She is very kind, giving, gracious, and just plain sweet! Matt's folks live in California so we don't get to see them as often as we would like but we love them just the same! Whenever they come out to visit Mom D. is always willing to buy us groceries, go clothes shopping with us, and just show us her amazing love towards us. We are so grateful for Mom and all she does for our family. Matt and I didn't have time to get Mom's present put together before Mother's Day so we sent her a card but we have a fun gift on the way! We love Mom D. very much and appreciate all she does for us! This is just a small tribute to our Mom's the ladies that brought us into the world and have never stopped carring for us. We love you and hope to see you soon!

Moving Day #1...let's get-r-done!

Today is Day #1 of our official move. For the last couple of days we have been moving this and that over, basically what we can fit into our car. Today, however, we are going to rent a UHAUL try to get it all done! I don't know if we will get everything today (i.e. clothes, food, bathroom stuff, etc.) but we are gonna try! I don't know a single person that actually likes to move. I mean moving into a new place is nice and all but the whole "moving" part just plain bites. Luckily most of our stuff is all packed up it's just the physical labor part of moving it into the truck, driving to our new place, moving it out of the truck, and into the apartment that I could do without. I can't wait to get all our stuff over there and start organizing and rearranging and decorating though, it will be blast! Ya maybe I am weird like that but I really love it! I will keep you posted on how the move is going but as for right now I am just trying to get into mood, after tonight we'll see how much of a "mood" I am still in.

Time for a change...

So I decided it was time to update my blog a little. I have to thank Erin for showing me to this amazing website that has the cutest backgrounds! Feel free to check them out at: http://www.leeloublogs.blogspot.com/. I decided that I was tired of my old backround and needed a change. Plus I think this background is more summer-ish (if that makes sense) and it's just to have something a little different! Enjoy!

We found an apartment!! YEA!

As you may or may not know Matt and I were given the amazing opportunity, back in January after my Grandpa passed away, to live at his house rent-free while it's on the market. Well it hasn't sold yet but this older couple have been looking at it for quite awhile now and we think they will probably buy it any day now. Instead of being homeless we decided to start looking around to see if we could find any apartments closer to our work for good deals and we did! Last Thursday I was looking online and found a 2 bedroom apartment, 1,000 sq ft, for $675 a month including utilities. We thought it was too good to be true (or at least a run down scary apartment in the ghetto of Orem...ya there are ghetto's in Orem!) so we decided to go look at it and we were pleasantly surprised. Here is a picture of the house (the apartment is in the basement to the left). I found this picture on googlemaps so its a little blurry but it's the best I could find...

But ya pretty decent looking home right? We looked at the apartment and for the price it's not half bad! I mean all the apartments we have looked at around Orem for under $700 have been a wee bit scary and for this one we don't have to pay utilities what else could you ask for?! It's 2 bedrooms which is really nice, has large spacious front room and kitchen and it wasn't built back in the 70's (in reference to our old apartment with it's ugly brown tile floor and 70's retro green counter tops and funky laps, and not to mention the bathroom that was inside our bedroom, funk-a-delic) needless to say we are pretty excited about our new place. Also it's really close to work for both of us and close to school, we should be saving a bunch on gas and that's always a good thing! Here is another pic of the house, you can see our entrance kind of behind that tree...

It even has it's own walkway to an area we can park, a nice looking yard that we don't even have to mow, all very good perks! We are signing the papers tonight so looks like we will be pretty busy in the next couple of days, oh the joys of moving! We are really grateful we found this place and hope it works out well for us. Though I wouldn't say we are exactly thrilled we are leaving our comfortable condo in American Fork we are glad we found a nice place to live. It's very bittersweet leaving the house but we feel we have been blessed to find this place!