April 18, 2020 Update

 Hi everyone,

We hope you're all doing well! Life is great here in Provo. Our natural inclination towards introversion makes us very well-suited to a life of quarantine and limited social interaction. :) 

Nathan is in the middle of finals week (he is actually studying right at this moment). His last day of finals is on Wednesday, and then he is done for the semester! He will be taking a religion class during spring term since it is all online, enabling him to continue the class even when we move to Texas partway through spring term. That has been nice, because otherwise he would have had to wait until fall or look into the Independent Study options, which cost extra money. It will also be nice for him to have some more free time before his internship starts, and he is looking forward to playing with our new Xbox that we bought recently... #stimuluscheck. 

I have been teaching online since March 16, and will continue doing that through the end of the school year now that the governor and state superintendent have made that decision. While I certainly miss seeing my students in person every day, I can't deny that working from home has been a lot more comfortable and convenient. My team teachers and I plan together on Google Meet and split up the load of recording video lessons, which makes the workload very manageable. I do "office hours" on Zoom every day so that students who need help or have questions can get on and have real-time interaction with me. I have one student who gets on my office hours almost every day and just wants to chat with me for the full hour, so we've had to establish some boundaries haha. Things are going really smoothly overall. It is definitely a bummer to finish out my first year of teaching in this unexpected way, but we're making the best of it! I also love all the extra time I have to read,and have been doing so voraciously. I ordered a Kindle as a graduation gift (thank you, Mom and Dad!) and am super excited to use that to access Provo Library's online digital collection while the physical building is closed, and also while we're in Texas. 

This coming Thursday would have been my graduation ceremony from BYU. Instead, the McKay School of Education asked each graduate to send in a picture and a 15-second video expressing our gratitude and goodbyes. The pictures and videos, along with other content, will all be featured on a website that will go up on Thursday. I'll send out the link for anyone who wants to check it out. I am also happy to announce that I officially PASSED my Teacher Work Sample project that I turned in about two weeks ago, so now I feel like a real graduate! :) My parents and Josh came to visit a couple of weeks ago to celebrate my graduation, since they had been planning to come out for the ceremony before it got cancelled. We had a lot of fun with them while they were here. 

Our baby girl seems to be doing well. I felt what may have been movements a couple of times, but I'm not convinced that's what I actually felt. It's probably wishful thinking more than anything. I have an anterior placenta, which means it is attached to the front of the uterus and cushions the baby's movements, making them harder to feel this early on. I'm sure that in the next few weeks as she keeps getting bigger, I will be able to feel her move a lot more though. We are just grateful that our anatomy scan went well and that everything looks normal and healthy. ♥  

We haven't heard any updates about Nathan's internship, so unless anything changes, we are still planning on being in Dumas, Texas for the summer. We hope that the coronavirus situation doesn't change that, because it will be an amazing opportunity for Nathan. We will leave Provo on Thursday, May 28 and spend that night in Colorado with Mom and Dad (since it is conveniently right on the way!), and then finish the drive the next day. 

We haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately, so I was looking through my photos and grasping at straws. If you didn't see, there was a big "first photo" challenge that was going around on Instagram where couples posted their first photo taken together. I had way too much fun going back through my old mission photos to find Nathan's and my first pictures together, so I'll attach a couple here. ;)  

I think that's about all from us! We love and miss you all! 

Love,

Amy and Nathan

December 15, 2019 Update

 Hello family!

Sorry we dropped the ball on sending out an update last week. Here's what's new in our lives:

First, Maddie and James Empey (who were renting out the basement for the last year) just moved out yesterday. We posted the basement for rent on Facebook groups about a week ago and have spent the last week responding to tons of messages about it and giving people tours. Most of the people who came by were a little quirky and we were starting to get nervous about finding someone as awesome as the last two couples that have lived down there since we moved upstairs, but then this really nice couple came by and seemed really interested. Their names are Karla and Tyrell. We were already thinking they would be a good fit when we found out that Karla actually served in Logan and Christi's mission! They had great things to say about her, so that pretty much sealed the deal. Cheryl offered them the apartment and they accepted and are excited to start moving in soon!

Nathan took his first final yesterday and said it sucked, but he probably got like 100% because that's what usually happens. He has 4 more finals to take between Monday and Thursday this week, and then he is DONE! Well, for a couple of weeks at least. :) This has been one of his hardest semesters yet. During the last couple of weeks, we have barely seen each other because he has had a million group projects that kept him on campus well into the night. I am really proud of how hard he has worked and how well he has done. Nathan's a champ!

Amy is trying to survive the craziness that is teaching elementary school in December. It is very exciting, but students also seem to have forgotten every procedure that they ever learned and drive her nuts some days. She took a Drama class at BYU and her teacher shared a readers' theater script with her for the classic Charles Dickens story, A Christmas Carol. Her class is going to perform it for the other classes and the students' parents, with costumes, props and everything. The kids are stoked about it! That has been really fun. 

YM and YW are also keeping us pretty busy. Amy is really excited because she and the other leaders met together and created a plan for how to restructure the classes and class presidencies. We asked the bishop to call several new women in as advisors, which will be such a blessing. The YW had a big activity this last Friday night where we rode the frontrunner up to Salt Lake to see the lights on Temple Square and eat dinner at the Nauvoo Cafe. A couple of weeks before, the YW expressed interest in doing something to help homeless people, so one of our activities this month was shopping for and putting together care packages for homeless people with snacks, hand warmers, socks, etc. We took those with us to Salt Lake and gave them out to people that we passed. We had a series of mishaps befall us on the train ride back (it was jam-packed, the power went out for like 15 minutes, a high school kid asked for 4 of the young women's phone numbers, and we didn't get home until after midnight), but we had a fun time and now have a great story to tell. :) 

I honestly can't remember when we sent our last update so if this is a repeat just disregard it. My school took a fun field trip to see a BYU women's basketball game and Nathan met us there. My students kept staring at him and then looking away like they were all sneaky. My school also sponsored a family night at Classic Skating in Orem, so Nathan and I went and saw several of my students there. I'll send some pictures of both of those events (one of them shows Nathan and I on the big screen with one of my students dancing like a madman right in front of us, lol). 

A while ago, Nathan got contacted by someone in the Religion department because they wanted to spotlight a painting he made for his Foundations of the Restoration class in an exhibit at the JSB. They invited us to the event and Nathan, along with the other student artists, had to give a 3-minute talk about his painting. We also ate a lot of cream puffs while we were there. ;) 

One of Amy's team teachers at Larsen is named Katie Howard, and her husband Jason works in a virtual reality company called The Void. They have their headquarters in Lindon, which is where they test out their new VR experiences before they release them. They invited us along with the other two teachers on Amy's team, their husbands, & the student teacher who's been working with one of our team, and her husband. We had such a fun time with them and got to go through a cool Avengers-themed VR experience. 

We also went and threw hatchets with some of Nathan's friends from his program, which was fun. It was a massive group date. See pictures below.

I think that's all from us! A week from today, we will be flying out to West Virginia to spend Christmas with Amy's sister Carolyn and brother Rob. Amy is very close to both of them yet doesn't get to see them very often, so it is a great blessing to be with them for the holiday. 

We send our love to all of you this Christmas!

Nathan and Amy

Nathan's Birthday 2019

 

June 15, 2019 Family Update

 Dearest Familia,

 

Life continues as normal (mostly) for us here in Provo, UT, 84601 United States of America, Planet Earth, system: Milky Way. We both did spring classes and Amy’s ended a couple weeks ago since she was teaching in a Portuguese immersion school and school has already ended. Nathan is taking a physics and biology class along with doing research. Finals are this week, which he is dreading, but excited to be done with classes and get a break from college for a couple months. His research deals with Nuclear Engineering and specifically a reactor that runs on molten salt fuel and coolant. He may continue to work for this professor if he can get paid during the summer so that he doesn’t get too bored.

 

We got season passes to the local waterpark in Provo (Seven Peaks) and have already gone once. Other than that, our summer plans are basically visiting with family and we hope to go camping and hiking. We have been tending our garden, which took a hit several weeks ago from a bad hailstorm. Luckily, most of it has recovered just fine and we replanted what didn’t. We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, pumpkin, beans, peas, carrots, kohlrabi, green peppers and beets. We have also started a compost pile in the backyard and are hoping that it will give us some good compost to use in the garden next year. We are trying to get in better shape. Nathan likes to run, but Amy is not a runner… so Amy rides a bike alongside Nathan as he runs. He has a route that he runs that is about 2 miles.

 

Amy will be busy in her free time this summer as she sets up her classroom at Larsen Elementary in preparation for her internship in the 4^th grade starting August 19^th. She has 3 other 4^th grade teachers on her team at the school who she has already gotten to know quite well from her practicum last semester. They have been helpful for Amy and she is excited to work with them. We have bought about 500 books for Amy’s school library, and they were filling our office for quite some time, but we finally got to take them to her classroom once she got her classroom keys.

 

Amy is still a beehives advisor and Nathan a teachers quorum advisor. Last week was a combined activity that Amy was in charge of planning, and we did water balloon games. It had been hot and sunny all week, but of course after all 300 balloons had been filled, a storm moved in and it got cool and rainy right before the activity. Luckily it didn’t rain too hard and everyone still had a fun time. It seems like we have a 3^rd secret calling in the ward as date-night babysitters. I guess word has gotten around that Amy is great with kids and we now have a frequent list of families that ask us to babysit for them.

 

We decided to volunteer as New Student Orientation Group Leaders for the incoming summer class students at BYU. We went to training on Friday and it seems like it will be pretty fun. It is pretty much just a mini EFY for the freshman for two days, next Friday and Saturday. Honestly, we’re just in it for the free food, t-shirts and gift cards, but we get to be leaders together so it will be fun anyways. It will just be like babysitting 30 freshman for two days. There is another girl matched with us as a group leader, and she probably wishes that she was paired with some cute single guy and not some lame married couple.

 

Amy’s parents will be here in a couple weeks (right before Mom and Dad come to Utah) and will stay with us one night. Jenny recently got her PhD, just in time to retire. They also finally got their mission call to serve in the Bogota, Colombia temple for 6 months. They were initially denied because of Larry’s seafood allergy, but they persuaded them to let them go as long as they bring 20 epi-pens with them. Josh is halfway done with his mission, and we’re excited for him to come to BYU when he gets back. It will be just like when Nathan got home from his mission and already had family at BYU. He probably won’t want to live near us, but that’s fine, he is allowed to have a social life and meet girls.

 

Well, that’s about it from us. We should hopefully have some cooler pictures of our summer adventures for our next e-mail.

 

Love,

Nathan and Amy

 

PICTURES:

 

1 – Us with Jenny at her graduation.

2 – Us in the student athlete building on campus. James (basement tenant that plays on BYU football) took the young men on a tour.

3 – Amy on her bike before we went running.

4 – At the waterpark.

5 – Our chocolate addiction continues. We tried making these weird frappe things, they weren’t that great… (also, no coffee involved).

6 – yes, more chocolate. If there is fruit underneath the chocolate then it doesn’t count as dessert.

7 – Amy showing off her new school.

8 – Amy’s classroom!

The Dawn of a Brighter Day

I know it's been forever since I've posted anything, but I just wanted to put up this poem that I wrote about the First Vision and the Restoration.

The Dawn of a Brighter Day

By Amy Weatherford

On a spring morning, long ago

A young boy with a doubt in his mind

Ventured out into the solitude

And hoped an answer to find

Long he had pondered and searched

And yet could not be rid of confusion

There were moments when he asked himself

If religion was all an illusion

With all these thoughts present in his heart

He entered the grove of trees

And, selecting a spot, the young boy of fourteen

Humbly fell to his knees

As he poured out the desires of his soul

Darkness threatened to consume

But God’s power is greater than evil

And a light shortly dispelled the gloom

Two persons glorious beyond description

Inside the light could be seen

His soul rejoiced as he heard the words

“From thy sins ye are clean”

Then came the knowledge pure and sweet

Which he had long awaited

That the true church was not presently on the earth

But through him would be reinstated

A young boy of fourteen left the woods that day

With a sacred and holy call

To become the prophet of the true church

Which was established to save us all

Though the boy’s understanding was still limited

Things would never be the same

On that day, the Restoration began to unfold

And would not cease ‘til the Savior came

Such a marvelous occurrence

Words cannot adequately convey

All my life has been changed forever

By that beautiful, blessed spring day

To the glorious Beings who appeared in the grove

My heart sings in constant praise

For their infinite goodness and love towards men

Which I have felt in all my days

Love which led them to restore these truths

In answer to a young boy’s prayer

What witness could be more powerful

Of how deeply for us the Lord does care?

Though I was not present on that day

The truth of it was confirmed in my heart

And to any honest seeker, this same certainty

The Lord promises to impart

Now, with the testimony I possess

I have a sacred duty

To go forth in the world and fearlessly share

The restored gospel’s infinite beauty

It's almost Thanksgiving!

In light of Thanksgiving, I wanted to share this quote that I love. I've been thinking about gratitude a lot, especially because church today was focused on it and it made me want to be a more grateful person. There is so much in my life to be thankful for, especially my incredible family.

As for updates on my life, I've mostly been busy with school stuff. There have been some fun activities going on in my ward, like hot chocolate parties, making gratitude journals (haha that was a Relief Society activity), Hawaiian haystacks/game night parties, and other random stuff. Life is fun as always here at the Y. I seriously love it here so much. And Monticello is a super fun apartment complex! I'm starting to get sad that the semester is almost over. I'll miss it here.

Also, one of my friends from the 3200 wing of Hinckley Hall got baptized last week! She is an exchange student from China and she is the sweetest thing. Most of the girls in my hall were there, so we took a little reunion picture:

Unfortunately, again, that is the only picture I have taken. I am so bad!

I can't wait to come home to Laramie on Tuesday for Thanksgiving break! After that, I have two weeks of classes and one week of finals, and then I'm home until March. So crazy! I am going to Brazil in 101 days, guys!!

I hope you are all doing well and remembering to be thankful for the beauty in your lives :)

Updates

Sorry I haven't posted in so long! My main updates are from this weekend, though, so I guess you haven't missed much. First of all, I dressed as Belle from Beauty and the Beast for my ward Halloween party on Friday night as well as a trunk-or-treat activity for Primary kids and our stake dance, which were last weekend. Mom, Dad, and Josh arrived in Provo late Friday night and I stayed in the hotel with them. Dad took a picture of me in my costume and Josh, who is such a handsome stud he doesn't even need to dress up :) Look how tall he is! I adore this guy.

On Saturday morning, we ate a delicious breakfast at Kneader's Bakery. At about noon, I met a girl at the Oquirrh Mountain temple. She and I are both part of a sister missionaries group on Facebook, and she volunteered to do free mission pictures for anyone. I thought it would be fun, so she took pictures of me. Unfortunately, there were literally 80 mph winds all day, and so my hair was somewhat unmanageable. But here is one of the pictures of me with my Portuguese Book of Mormon :) 

The reason Mom, Dad, and Josh came to visit me for the weekend was so that Mom and Dad could go through the temple with me. We went to the Bountiful temple, and Grandma and Grandpa were able to join us as well.

It was a wonderful weekend and I was so grateful to be with Mom, Dad, and Josh!