Better late than never, right? We finished writing all of our thank you cards today! We are very grateful to everyone who was so generous to us... and very grateful we have now thanked them all, after 7 months.
Married life is way better than anyone told us! We love everything about being married, especially each other.
Since we got married we went skiing, drove to Vegas for our second reception, attended General Conference, enjoyed Joao and Summer's wedding, said goodbye to Miguel's parents, filled out all the documents for permanent residency, wrote most of our thank you cards (the rest are coming soon!), finished student teaching and starting tutoring full time, interviewed at lots of schools, spent a weekend with Jeremy, Kedra and Rebecca on their way up to Portland, signed a teaching contract, celebrated graduation/Easter/Aubrey's blessing with the family in San Jose, took med school final exams (and passed!), celebrated our birthdays at the ranch with the fam, finally took our honeymoon trip to Hawaii (and loved it... except for the sunburn), spent a weekend with Joao, Summer and Ana while Joao had his broken nose fixed, spoke in Church, interviewed at another school, fretted about which position to accept and stayed with the first, began summer research at the Moran Eye Center and took another awesome trip to Vegas from which we just returned! All the while Miguel has been working in the temple and serving in the Elders' Quorum Presidency, we've had friends over every week, and the floor is somehow still vacuumed and the dishes are done. What an adventure! Judging by the first 2 2/3 months of our marriage, we have a lot of excitement to come!
I think this post serves simultaneously as the update on our lives and the explanation of lackadaisical blogging habits. We'll try to get details and photos of our adventures on here soon.
Just before Christmas Miguel was called as a temple worker in the Salt Lake Temple. Because we were gone for Christmas and the temple was closed for maintenance, he worked his first shift last Saturday and loved it. I will go to the temple for the first time in a few weeks and we're hoping that I can be a temple worker as well after we are married. We live across the street from the temple, we will work in the temple. We love the temple!
We were touched by this letter which he received yesterday from the temple presidency.
Dear Brother Teixeira:
We are pleased that you have accepted a call to serve in the House of the Lord as an Ordinance Worker. You have been carefully and prayerfully chosen for the high standard of dedication and worthiness which qualifies you to serve in that holy place. Your bishop and stake president have confirmed that you are worthy to serve in the Salt Lake Temple.
Temple service is a unique opportunity and a sacred privilege to assist in blessing both the living and the dead with the ordinances of eternity. Such service requires a certain consecration of time and effort, but is rewarded with rich spiritual experiences and blessings. We thank you for your willingness to serve.
Sincerely,
Sheldon F. Child
Larry V. Lunt
N. Douglas Calder
Miguel and are are practically real adults now. He introduces himself as "Student Dr. Miguel Teixeira" and I'm "Ms. Foote". The only thing that could make us more legitimate than those titles is marriage-- married people always seem so old and mature. That will come soon too.
Miguel is in his second term of Medical School at the University of Utah. Along with lectures, he was in the cadaver lab once a week last semester and now he is assigned to clinics in Salt Lake and Toele. We're still working on the balance between studying and having fun (meaning we need to study more and have less fun) but Miguel is loving school and is doing well.
He catches the train just across the street from his apartment. Not a bad view from the trax station!:
Miguel spends 4 hours a day in this lecture hall with the 81 other members of his class (except those who skip class to ski). Academia is thrilling to him and he is fully convinced that he wants to teach at medical school along with his practice.
This summer, Miguel will be researching at the Moran Eye Center. He submitted a grant proposal a few weeks ago and we're waiting to find out if he gets it. If so, he'll be studying eye diseases caused by diabetes by creating a mouse that has the same disease. Such studies are now done on monkeys, so it's huge if he can breed a mouse with the disease. That's as much as I can say about that, because that's as much as I understand.
My job is much simpler to explain...
From 7:15-2:45 I am Ms. Foote and Lehi High School. I'm student teaching Algebra II and College Prep (which is like pre-pre-calculus as far as I can tell). I've learned a lot, but more than anything I've learned that I'm really ready to have my own classroom! I didn't like high school much, and now I remember why, but teaching is a lot of fun. It's definitely a challenge to convince kids that they care about math, but I like challenges.
After school I go to Waterford School where I work as a math tutor for third and fifth grade girls. We're working on multiplication of mulit-digit numbers and converting decimals to percentages. It's very different from working with the high school students but I love working one-on-one with the kids and it's fun to teach elementary school math. After I'm done student teaching, I will get more students so I might get back into high school math. Either way, it's lots of fun.
Finding an apartment was such an adventure! Miguel was living in a place in downtown Salt Lake and had just called into the Elder's Quorum Presidency when we started looking for an apartment. We loved the location and the ward, and especially because of his calling we felt like we needed to stay there.
After looking and looking and looking, we found the perfect place-- an old house with wood floors that creak and bookcases built into the wall and an old elaborate fire place. It was a dream home from the 1900s and we loved it! But... within the hour from when we called until we went to see it again, someone else had signed the contract, paid the deposit and picked up the keys. Bummer! We were so devastated.
So, the apartment search started over. It is really exciting that we get to start a home together, but looking for one is not so much fun... until you find a place, which eventually we did. It doesn't have creaky wooden floors or a hundred year old fireplace, but it is a beautiful apartment and we are excited to make it our home.
Here it is! We were so blessed to find a small apartment in Eaglegate. The average age is our ward is 60 so we are at least 2 standard deviations below the mean and we love it! The apartment is directly east of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, so this is the view we see driving down to the parking garage:
We could not be happier! What a blessed life.
First of all, we want to express our gratitude. We have already felt such an overwhelming flow of love and support from our family and friends. Thank you for your generosity in helping us as we establish our home and begin our life together.
A few tips regarding our registry (there are links at the top of the page)--
Macy's always has sales. It's worth it to wait.
Several of our items can be found cheaper at wal-mart. We are really happy to get things from there as well.
Lastly, we really love IKEA!
Miguel and I met 13 months ago on top of a mountain. Through a series of very fortunate events, we signed up for the same skiing class at Sundance ski resort. There were only three other people on our class, so we got to know each other well, especially because we conveniently ended up next to each other every time on the ski lift. We had 10 minutes to talk and get to know each other between each run and I became more and more impressed. After our first class I told Mom, "I have never been so intrigued by anyone. I met the most amazing guy." Incredibly, he was able to overlook my ridiculous ski outfit and he asked me on a date after three weeks of class. We saw each other every day after that. We studied, cooked, played racquetball, went to the temple, read and played together. But more than anything, we loved being in the mountains.
The motto of Sundance is, "The place where it all started." And that was true for us. After 8 months, Miguel took me back to the ski lift where we met and asked me to be his wife. That high place was the start of our friendship, the start of our love and the start of our life together.
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