Lake Powell Bruderer Style!

How could a trip to Lake Powell be bad, really? This year we had almost everyone there (Kara was on a senior trip and Adam was working. We missed them). We also had a fun-loving guest join us! My sister Kiersten!! Hooray! Kiersten and I sucessfully dragged Clark and Linda out of bed around 6:00 am. We tried to sleep in, but our grandpa has us trained that as soon as it is light you ski. Amber, Tom, Jason, and Scott were our wakeboarding experts. Scott also mastered the knee board. April, Davis, Kiersten, Linda, Clark and I headed up the slalom skiiers. We celebrated Father's Day at Powell this year. Happy Father's Day to Clark, Steve, and someday Scott! We did an excursion to Cathedral Canyon and Rainbow Bridge. We got to a section of Cathedral canyon that was really narrow. We managed to get the boat through and we found a cool swimming hole on the other side. Kiersten, Linda and I decided to push the boat back out!! Somehow this trip ended pirate themed again. Big surprise, seeing as I married the King of the Pirates. Davis was our most faithful pirate. Otherwise known as Capt. Cut and Jump. We played in lots of pirate games, including: Pirate of the Island, and Pirate's Dice. After somebody had an impressive run they received an "AAARRRRRGGGHH" with a pirate hook hand from the crew on board. Scott had some fun with facial hair. He started with a full beard and worked his way down to a sole patch by the end of the trip. We also got to test out an air chair while we were down there. It was hilarious to watch! The trip was full of good food, lots of sun, and laughs until our last day. That is when two engines died and Linda, Kiersten and I had to brave the channel during peak hours to go to the marina to get gas. Oh man. The water almost tore our boat apart and left us with sea legs for two days!

A New Job!!!

Today I, Britta, got a job offer to be the studio manager for Silver Pelican Photography! Hooray!! This is as close to a dream job as it gets for me! I will be making appointments / calendaring, taking care of customers, viewing appointments, wedding consultations, sales, phones, advertising, studio management, front-desk, re-touching, and associate photographer. I will be able to have my hand in almost everything that goes on there! I am so excited!! As an associate photographer I will be first in line on shoots after the full time photographers! And I will receive a commission off of the shoots and print orders I am involved in! Silver Pelican Photography is located in Salt Lake in Foothill Village! Check out their website: www.silverpelicanphotography.com. Hopefully I will be on there very soon!!!

Paparazzi?

Well Capree and I quit our day jobs and decided to commit our best creative efforts towards pursuing Hollywood Celebrities!!! Psych!! We heard about this shoot for a "movie premiere" that needed people to pose as paparazzi. It was paying $30 an hour so why not, right? And we didn't have to actually shoot. There was no film in our cameras! They just wanted the visual effect of the flash and the "impression" that we were taking pictures! HA! We were under the impression that we were either posing as paparazzi for an actual movie premier or that we were extras in a scene for a movie involving a movie premier with paparazzi. Once we arrived on location however we we totally confused. Only one other paparazzi member had an SLR with external flash (which was in the requirements for the shoot). The others had little point and shoot digitals! We were told that we needed to yell at the people coming into the party like they were celebrities and we were paparazzi. Hilarious! Then we realized that it was a Hollywood / movie premier themed party! And who was throwing the party was very unclear. All we could tell was that there were a lot of senior citizens and a lot of alcohol. So the first thing we assumed was that the sweet senior citizens were getting scammed out of their money. But that guess was also very wrong. Capree and I googled the company name the next day and found out that the host company made external bladder bags for those who no longer had control of their bladders or bowels!! AWESOME!!! Talk about a photo adventure!!

The Last of the Trio!

Ben was the last of the amigos (but certainly not the least) to find an excellent woman to stand by his side. We were so glad we could be there with them to celebrate.We will miss you! Of course Ben and Scott had to trade jackets at some point in the evening. Nice. Now we just have to convince Ben and Nick to come back to Utah so that we can get our three houses all in a row!!! Ben and Lexi are heading to Chicago and Nick and Alisa are heading to Austin, Texas. Good luck guys!

A Farewell To Bachelorhood!

The boys made sure to send Ben off into married life with one final party. The celebration took place at Nick's house. Things got a little out of hand once the root beer kicked in. The sugar rush prompted superman impressions over the couch and onto the love sac. Boys will be boys!

California Here We Come!!

Well we had the fastest trip in recorded history!! We were supposed to leave Thursday morning and stay until Sunday, but my sister had a wedding she was a part of and Scott had that HUGE job interview. (Good thing we didn't miss that!) So we flew in around 8:30 am on Saturday morning. We got a sweet rental van and drove to Universal Studios. We hit the essential rides: Back To The Future (luckily Scott didn't get sick), Jurassic Park (Kiersten and Erik got soaked), and the Mummy Returns (we went on it twice! If you are ever there definitely ride it. You won't be disappointed.) We left Universal at 1:00 pm and drove to the Pantages theater in LA to see WICKED!! Yeah! We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then went into the most amazing theater I have ever seen and saw my favorite musical of all time. Some of us grabbed some sleep in the car on the way to California Adventure and Disneyland. We arrived in Anaheim around 6:30 pm. We went to California Adventure first. We rode the Tower of Terror, and the Screamer. Scott got front row on the Screamer! It was awesome. We stopped to eat some deliciously massive burgers before continuing on to Disneyland. We rode the "new" Pirates of the Carribean ride. All that was new was that they changed some of the dialogue and threw "Jack Sparrow" into a few scenes. We shopped for pirate apparel, but found we didn't have enough booty. Before the park closed we manged to ride the Matterhorn, Space Mountain (which has been updated and is absolutely amazing!). While the Nilsson clan went on Space Mountain Scott and Wayne discovered the "Buzz Lightyear" ride, which ended up being Scott's favorite ride! You ride around in carts and shoot bad guys for points! Right up his alley. We made it back to the hotel around 1:00 am. We all crashed out pretty fast. Believe it or not, we all slept in until 10:30 am California time. Which means 11:30 am Utah time. Wayne had to put on his reading glasses to make sure he was seeing the clock right. He NEVER sleeps in later that 6:00 am! We had a fun Mother's Day breakfast at noon before we jumped on the plane home! Whew!! What a trip. We decided to never try to top this trip. Because it is impossible to do more or have more fun in such a short time! We did three theme parks and a Broadway play in 14 hours!!

Hello IM Flash Technologies!!!!

Scotty got his first job offer today!!!! YEAH!! WOOHOO!! The first two interviews were over the phone. The third interview was today at imFlash and lasted almost three hours!! He was one of the very fortunate ones to get an offer on the the spot! Way to go Scott! We are waiting to hear from a few other companies. But imFlash is not a bad way to go, Micron and Intel are their parent companies and are world renowned in their
industries. If we accept this job offer Scott would be a lithography process engineer in the FAB. Fancy!! He would work in a "bunny suit" in the clean room (see trapped in the clean room) for twelve hour shifts. Whew. But the good news is that he alternates working three days a week with four days off and and working four days a week with three days off. Wow. The company is located in Lehi, Utah. So lucky for us we get to stay in Utah for now. The offer is pretty good, so we will most likely accept! Wish us luck!!! Check them out: http://www.imftech.com

Meet Francis . . .

I bet you didn't know that the Bruderer's had a pet. Especially a pet duck. Well they do. Over the last few weekends of being up there we have befriended an adorable white duck and named her Francis. Her companion was tragically killed by some neighborhood boys and she herself was almost killed by two hunting dogs. Had it not been for Clark's courageous rescue of dear Francis she might not be with us today. So she has decided that the house is a very safe place for her. Plus she gets fed very very well. She waddled all around the deck on Saturday while we worked. It was so fun. Jason even got her to jump up on his stomach!! Davis wants to take Francis to Texas and give her a new home on the golf course. Way to go Davis!

SLC 1/2 Marathon

Well I did another 1/2 marathon! But this time I got to do it with April (my sister-in-law). It was so amazing to have her right there by me the whole time. We really kept each other going. I loved having a running buddy with me the whole time. We kicked butt too! We finished in 2:03 which is really good. I was so amazed with April. I have never run with her before so I had no idea I was teaming up with a pro! After the race we went to lunch and went and got massages, then crashed on the couches at the Bruderer house. We were laughed at frequently over the next few days because we hobbled so much! Our next race is May 19th. We are running the Ogden Marathon relay. So we will have a team of six people. Five people run 6 miles and the last person runs 3 miles. Our team is called the Cannon Crazies! It consists of me, April, my mom, my sister Kiersten, my sister-in-law Megan, and my step-sister Libby. It turned out to be an all girls race!

GRADUATION DAY!!!!!!

Finally!! Hooray!! Scotty is a BYU graduate officially! I couldn't be more proud of him! Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at Commencement and did a fantastic job despite of all of the criticism surrounding him speaking. I was very impressed. After Commencement Gwenya (Britta's mom) took us out to Magelby's to celebrate! Scott had the largest cheering section at Convocation the next day. Linda made a "Super Scott" sign to hold up. It was awesome. After Convocation we went to lunch at Chili's then shopping for Scott's graduation gift. Later that evening we got together with the whole Bruderer side to celebrate Scott and Alena's graduation. We went to one of Scott's favorite places to eat: Aristo's, a Greek restaurant. Surprising!

No Chocolate Easter Eggs Here!

Easter at the Bruderers was AMAZING!! While the Easter Bunnies were busy hiding treats, the kids went on a walk to the park. We came home and had to search the basement for some goodies. Scott of course was thrilled! But that wasn't the end of the fun. . . The Easter Bunnies had hidden 49 standard sized plastic eggs throughout the yard that we had to find. But these were no ordinary easter eggs. They were full of MONEY!! They had half dollars, dollars, and some even had five dollar bills inside. Jason was lucky enough to find the "golden egg" (that was pink and polka dotted) that had $20 inside!! Thanks Easter Bunnies!

Steve Visits Utah!!!

Steve came to see us! Of course the first thing Scott got him to do when he got here was . . . xbox! Surprise!! Then the next day we went to Boondocks with Clark, Jason, April, and Amber! Clark got his game on in the arcade. The boys teamed up and played a competitive round of mini golf, while the girls took our time and played a leisure round. We had a go-kart race. Unfortunately, all the cars has the same speed. So we couldn't really race. But the Bruderers definitely kicked butt when it came to laser tag! The other team never had a chance.

Trapped In The Clean Room!!

As Scott finishes up his senior year, he has finally gained access to the legendary clean room. The yellow light does have a function. It avoids photoresist exposure during lithography process when developing silicon wafers (I don't get it either). The stylish jumpsuit and mask to prevent dust particles from settling on semiconductor wafers which causes defects on the wafers with the end result being circuit failure. Yikes. The countdown is on! Only 23 days til graduation (ten school days)!! Hooray for Scott!

The Best / Worst Valentine's Day!

Scott and I were looking back through our photos to see if there was anything exciting we could post on our blog for family home evening. Scott saw our Valentine's Day pictures, and we decided that the events of that day should be told.
The day started out beautifully. It was sunny and warm. I went to work with a few secrets and surprises up my sleeve for later that evening. I came home for lunch full of excitement. I couldn't wait to decorate our apartment to surprise Scott when he came home from school. As I pulled into the parking garage, I was a little too excited and confused the gas and the brake. SLAM!!!! Right into a cement wall. Great. Scott called me thirty seconds later. It was career fair day and I thought maybe he was calling with good news about a job, so I restrained my crying until I realized he just wanted a ride. I burst into tears telling him I hurt the car. He was so calm, collected and supportive. I was so impressed. I picked him up, he brought me home, and called the insurance company and took our car to a few different shops for bids. All while I sat on the love sac in a puddle of tears.
Scott was so amazing that day. When he got back from figuring out the car,(there was a lot to figure out since, I locked the driver's seat belt, semi-set off the airbags, and did quite a number on the front left side! oops!) he went back up to campus to finish career fair.
I pulled myself together enough to make dinner and a feeble attempt at decorating. When Scott got home we had a lovely candlelit dinner and watched our wedding video. When the end of the day rolled around it turned out to be a fantastic day full of love in spite of my stupidity. What an amazing husband I have!

My Most Recent Duane Adventure!

I couldn't resist publishing this because it makes me so happy. Since I went away to college I haven't been able to go skiing with my Grandpa as much as I used to, so I was ecstatic to go skiing with him two weekends ago. For those of you who have heard me talk about the grandpa that I can't keep up with; this is him. We had an amazing sunny ski day with great snow, and I got to spend the whole day with my grandpa! Yeah!