McQuery

How do you pronounce my last name?

If you're one of my Hispanic friends from the mission, you probably say "Maa-Kway."

If you're just about anyone else who reads this blog (and therefore probably actually knows Heidi and/or I), you probably pronounce it "Mik-Kway" (I've never understood why "Mak" is easier for Hispanics to say than "Mik" but that's how it went)

If you're a salesperson randomly calling me you say "Mik-Queary"

Wait, what?  McQuery?  Where did that "r" come from??

I don't know.  If you do, let me know.  McQuery is quite honestly the most common mispronunciation of my family name - I hear it far more than McCoy or McKay, neither of which I could really blame anyone for saying.

If you've ever been tempted to say McQuery instead of McQuay, please let me know why.  I don't get it.



As an addendum, here's a picture of my beautiful MCQUAY ("Mik-Kway") family.  The photo is nearly two years old now, hence why Natalie's not there (my brother's wife), but it's the best I have on hand.  And I think we all look pretty good, too, if I may say so.

{Pinterest}

I'm hooked on Pinterest. If you are not familiar with it, let me tell you a little bit about it.

You know how you find brilliant things on the internet and you wish you could remember them all? Well, now you can. You can "pin" them to a "board" of yours. For example, if you stumble across a delicious sounding recipe that you don't want to make right now, but don't want to write it down and hope to find that scrape of paper later... then just pin it to your recipe board. Brilliant.

Pin fasion ideas, pin quotes, pin cleaning ideas, pin hair how-tos, pin craft projects that you want to do, etc... you can custom create as many boards as you want for whatever purpose you need. It's great.

It's great....I've worn my hair like this:


I've made these [the husband has especially appreciated this aspect of pinterest]:




Inspiration for our future house:


And things that make me laugh....





And lots lots more. It's great. Check it out.

My summer with Sears Holdings Corp

As most of our readers likely know, we spent the summer in Chicago.  But why?  I had an internship with Sears Holdings, the company that owns and directs the Sears and Kmart retail stores as well as brands such as Kenmore, Craftsman, Diehard, Lands End, and others.

This was in my email signature. :)

I worked on the Business Development and Strategy team for the Kenmore Craftsman Diehard business unit and spent most of my summer analyzing opportunities for the Craftsman brand.  I was there as a Business Analyst, part of a very neat program at Sears Holdings that gives talented undergrads the chance to work for a number of different businesses within Sears while also receiving a lot of mentoring and exposure to senior leadership.  We had a weekly "Senior Speaker Series" speech about every two weeks as well as weekly cohort meetings where we interacted with impressive people or got training on specific subjects.

I really enjoyed my time there. I learned a lot, I was exposed to a lot, and I found that I really enjoy being committed to and contributing to a work team.  My boss was fantastic, serving as a great mentor and friend throughout the summer.  I also really enjoyed many of the coworkers around me and miss them already.  It was a fun place to work.

Will I be going back?  We don't know yet.  We loved the area, we found wonderful friends, and I really enjoyed what I was doing.  Sears Holdings did extend an offer to me to return full-time - a very strong offer, too - but I'm exploring other full-time opportunities just to ensure Heidi and I can weigh our options fully.  I'm still very attracted to the drum-beat of thoroughbred management consulting, so we'll see what opportunities appear in that space.

View from outside... I didn't take this one.

 View from inside: main atrium.  This building was designed to feel like a mall.

180 degree turn around from where I stood to take previous picture

{Newest Member of the Family!!}

We would like to introduce you to our newest member of the family - this is the husband's new bike :) we're still trying to figure out a name...

Ha - you thought this was going to be about the baby, right? Too bad - she has not yet arrived - but do keep checking back, she'll come soon :)

Seriously though, we bought this bike of KSL last week, got it some new tires, and here it is!

Here's the husband putting on the new tires:

My stud of a husband loves getting his picture taken, can you tell? these pictures are at such a lovely angle because I was laying on a blanket reading my book [The Hobbit] while watching the husband fix his bike up, and I wasn't going to stand up....nope.

Ta-da! Since we moved into our new wonderful 2 bdrm place we are a bit further from campus than we used to be and it's a little hike to get to campus. Now, with the bike, the husband can get to and from school/work much faster - that means he can sleep in a little bit and get home earlier - hooray! :)

{Family in Town}

The day after we got back to Provo we had lotsa family in town!

My baby brother, Scott, and the husband's sister, Caitlan, are both freshman this year at BYU! Woot Woot!! So we had my mom, my baby brother, my older brother, the husband's mom, and the husband's sister all arriving in town the day after we got back. It was so great to see all of them! After a rocky drive up [rocky as in 2 popped tires, ruined wheel, rental car, 3 hour delay, nobody hurt.....] they came and had dinner with us, it was awesome.

Over the weekend Scott and Caitlan got settled into their BYU life, Dan got back into his groove, and we got to hang out with our mothers for a bit. It was wonderful!

On Thursday we went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple:

On Friday night we had a get together with my mom's side of the family. It was super fun.

Good long game of Egyptian Rat Screw...

Food and talking....

And a good ol' game of kickball.......Yes, I played and yes, I did hurt the next day lol but it was fun

That Saturday my wonderful Aunt Judy also threw me a family baby shower! It was cute and fun! It was mostly great to be able to spend time with family [especially since both mothers were able to attend] - we even had the folks from Idaho come down - what a fun surprise! Aunt Judy threw a fabulous shower with fabulous food, fabulous games, and fabulous flair, as she does everything in life. I'm so blessed to be surrounded by so many family members who are so loving and supportive - it was great to see a large majority of them under one roof!

Tuesday night we had a good-bye meal at Goodwood:

The mothers stayed for a few more days and then took off for Houston. But, the plan is that they will both be back [with other family members in tow..] in a few short weeks once Baby Evette decides to join us. PS - do you know how hard it is to plan things when you have no idea when the baby will decide to come? Oh well - she's calling the shots right now, and I'm just fine with that as long as she is happy and healthy!

Long gone

Everyone!

It's been a long, long time since I blogged last.  And even that last blog, as I remember it, was a rather short and inconsequential one.  Thankfully Heidi has been keeping good record of everything we've been up to, including our time hiking in Southern Utah (when Heidi was 5-6 months pregrant!), our road trip to Chicago, the millions of fun things we did there, our road trip back to Provo, and a couple of the things that has happened since our return to Happy Valley. [Note that I wanted to provide links to all of those things, but that would take hours I don't have, so if any of that piqued your interest just run a search or peruse our posts]

The biggest thing Heidi left out in all of those posts was what I was doing for most of the summer, in between all of those wonderful weekends exploring the sights of downtown Chicago, as well as what I've been up to since our return to Provo and where we're going from here.

I'll be taking care of all of that stuff.  I promise.  It may take some time, but I will.  In the interest of keeping order and helping things be searchable, I'll write individual posts for each of those topics instead of lumping them all together in one long, long post.

It's good to write again, though.  I miss the therapy.

{All things Baby}

We're getting close my friends, and Miss Evette's room is just about done...

The husband and I decided that for each of our children we want to get them a big nice print of Christ with a little child for their room. We decided on this one titled "Under His Wing" by Jay Bryant Ward for Evette. This is one of my favorite paintings and I hope that she will grow to love it as well.

Some of her books

Our make-shift closet/dresser for her :)

She already loves shoes just like her mommy and daddy :)

Magical swing..

Now we're just waiting for Miss Evette to arrive!