Christensen Family

2 posts in 2 days!! Don't forget to scroll down and see the other one!!

2012-01-02T14:30:00.007-07:00

LEAH IS 4 MONTHS!!! (And 1 week and 2 days!)
-Favorite toy is a dolly she got from Grandma Lori for Christmas. She was crying and we told her, "Go to sleep with your dolly." We put it on her tummy, she wrapped both arms around it, started sucking on its piggy-tail, and was happy and content for 15 minutes. :)
-She loves her play mat with singing toys from Grandma Wilma
-Can spend a LONG time (like 20 minutes) in her Johnny Jump Up from Mommy and Daddy
-Still won't take a pacifier
-Has been 'talking' a lot, lately. She babbles all the time. Her word is Oong-goonk!!!
-Is mostly bald on top, but has some 3 inch long hair on the sides. Still looks cute.
-Is getting better at sleeping. Usually asleep by 10 (instead of midnight), wakes up at 3, then sleeps 3:30-7, 7:30-9. Last night was 10:15-6:45 and 7:30-10:15. We could do that more often.
-Still loves tummy time. Sleeps better/longer on her tummy.
-Has started laughing. Hard. She puts her daddy in tears because he laughs so hard at her laughing. Way too cute!!
-Has been trying some rice cereal. The verdict is still out on whether it's a tasty thing or not. I think some of it actually made it to the inside of her tummy instead of the outside today!
-Is much more content to play by herself or be played with. Can be distracted from crying.
-Gives the best hugs and wet kisses any mommy could ever ask for.

Here are a few fun videos we've taken this month!!
*Playing in the Johnny Jump Up for the first time.

*First Rice Cereal Experience.

*Kicking

*Santa Jumping!!

My computer wouldn't let me upload the video of Leah walking!! (She is really good at picking up right foot, left foot, right foot, etc. We don't have to twist her body to make her do it!) It also wouldn't upload the talking that I captured. She told me a huge long story. You'll have to use your imaginations!!!
Enjoy!!! Leah sure is the biggest joy of our lives and we love every second of being her parents. We couldn't ask for a cuter, happier, more funny kid. She's such a silly peanut when she's in a happy, smiley mood. Next video will be her laugh!!!!! Stay tuned!!

Catch Up!....Major Overload of Pictures!

2012-01-02T11:13:00.009-07:00

Wow!! Life gets really busy! I thought, once I was a stay-at-home mom, I'd be staying at home all the time and could do stuff. Besides Leah taking up a ton of my time (worth every second) there are just SO many other things going on. This month was full of Alex finishing the semester, going to some activities, celebrating Christmas with both of our families, playing with friends, doing craft projects, cooking dinner, cleaning the house........etc. Here are some pictures that show some of what we've done!!

I made Leah this Santa dress with the hat, leggings and booties.

We took her to see Santa at a little community event. She did great!

So curious as to what was going on!!

When she went to see Santa again with her friend, though, she zonked out!!

She was out for a while!

Preview of some Christmas pictures I took of Leah. We are getting a Christmas card out eventually. I'm hopefully going to print out the pictures today and get them sent out tomorrow. A "Previous Year Review" works just as good as a Christmas card, right?

An attempt at family Christmas pictures. It was too cold.

Our two little Christmas trees, stockings, and extra Christmas lights to decorate our apartment! It looked cheery!

Our $5 Charlie Brown tree. I loved it!! (Plus the tree skirt I made!)

She looked cute peeking out of the blankets!

I caught Leah sucking her thumb!

Opening presents with Grandma and Grandpa Thornbrue!
What could it be?

A cute blankey and a dolly to cuddle with!!! Perfect!!

Daddy got some presents, too!! (So did mommy, but she was behind the camera the whole time!)

On Christmas morning (at Grandma and Grandpa Christensen's), Leah kept sucking on her bottom lip making a funny face!!

Woooo!!! Look at what was in her stocking!! So lucky! She especially liked the stickers!

Leah practiced opening presents. She got pretty good at it!
What is this one going to be?

A fun shape toy. Cool!!

Daddy got a thing that attaches to a faucet and has LED lights that are green, blue, or red depending on the temperature of the water. Pretty sweet!!

Leah got some books to read, also!!

Leah got a Johnny Jump Up.

Best. Present. EVER!

Tasty, too!

This toy was a great hit, also!! She loves the singing and dancing toys that hang down.

Going to church on Christmas!!

At the Christensen Family Christmas Party!!

My mom gave me the supplies to make some ornaments. This is how they turned out!

More Christmas pictures!! Such a cute Santa Baby!!

"Do you like my candy cane?"

"Ooh!!! Christmas lights!!"

Merry Christmas!! Happy New Year!!! And may you make many wonderful memories in the coming year!!

More Cute Baby!

2011-12-11T16:36:00.002-07:00

We now have a model in our family!

Flying with daddy

Twinner friends!....Leah's friend is 5 weeks younger. Leah is fitting in a newborn onsie and her friend is in a 0-3.

Love!!

Posing for the camera

Sleepy Christmas Lamby-pie!!

Happiness

Check out the cool leggings......

I made them out of a pair of socks!!!

Everyone who saw her when we were running errands thought she was the cutest baby EVER!!!

We think so, too!!!

3 months!!!!!

2011-11-29T15:29:00.009-07:00

Can you even believe it? Leah is 3 months old already.

-She is a pro at rolling from tummy to back (started at 4 weeks).
-She freely gives big, huge grins when mommy and daddy talk to her (started around 10 weeks).
-Loves her pink hippo friend.
-Won't take a pacifier.
-LOVES showers.
-Has ticklish feet.
-Will grasp a toy (when we shove it in her hand) and bonk herself in the face with it. :)
-Kicks her leg(s) when she's happy.
-Lets out a very audible "Hi" when she's playing with herself.
-Sucks on her hands a lot.
-Stops crying when she hears Mommy's voice.
-Goes to bed at midnight.
-Every 3 or 4 days she'll sleep 6-7 hours in a row!!
-She is 10 lbs 7 oz, 22.5 inches long.
-Does an "eh eh eh eh eh eh ahhhh" sound when falling asleep.
-Is almost starting to laugh.
-Hardly ever lets mommy get anything done, but I don't care because the only thing I ever want to do anyways is take care of my dear, sweet, incredible angel baby.

Enjoy some pictures!!!!!
Rolling over.

We made a sledding hill in our parking lot when we had the big snow. So fun!!

I love how she was sleeping. Sometimes when she falls asleep, I don't move her or else she will wake up.

Leah with her cousin once removed.
EllieMae, 3 weeks. Leah, 3 months.

Too precious to not share!

She fell asleep while watching me cook dinner! Must have been pretty boring!

As part of my exercise plan, I was walking A LOT one week. I would take Leah all bundled up in the carrier. She would fall asleep and stay asleep every time. Such a cooperative baby!

Giving smiles to daddy!

Leah loves to read stories!

She also likes learning from Baby Einstein.

Four of the recent babies in our ward.

10 weeks, 6 weeks, 5 weeks, 3 weeks!!

I dressed Leah as a turkey for Thanksgiving!! She was SO cute!

I especially love the feet!!

And who could ever resist a face like that? She is such a doll!! I am so lucky to be her mom!!

THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!!!!!!! My Thankfuls:
-Alex: working so hard while going to school so that I can stay home with our baby.
-Leah: making me laugh and smile so much every day.
-My mom: for letting me call her 5 times a day and talking to me and giving me advice, etc.
-Conference Ensign: I have been going through it and enjoying the conference talks again.
-Family in general: having fun, playing games, giving support, etc.
-Friends/Neighbors: who do silly things and play games with us and share food. :)

-Plus dozens of other things, but these are most on my mind right now!!!

Halloween!! + some!!

2011-11-22T05:02:00.007-07:00

Ok, so I know it's been FOREVER since our last post. I tried to put Halloween up the day after Halloween, but my computer would not let me upload pictures to blogger. I tried and tried, day after day, and it was still being annoying. Probably could have tried on our desktop, but that would mean getting the card from the camera, loading them onto that computer, and then trying. Just seemed annoying! Anyways, now that it finally let me upload some pictures, most of you who read my blog have already seen all the pictures because they are on facebook. Now I have to get the camera card and put the new pics on the laptop and see if blogger will work a second time. Later! I don't feel like doing that at 5:15 in the morning as I am feeding Leah. At least this is the first time she's woken up!! (11:30-5 is pretty good!!!)

Also, these are in no particular order. It's too annoying to make them be in order, so enjoy them anyways, because it's been frustrating to try and get them here in the first place!! :)

I love this little princess with her prissy face!!! She is such a doll. I also love this outfit from Aunt Rita. So cute!!

So worn out from running errands. Also, this fuzzy outfit is my favorite thing to put her in because it makes her so soft and cuddly!! Love!

Doing homework with Daddy can be exhausting, too!!

I was a Mermaid for Halloween. Leah was a trout! And Alex was a fisherman with his "two greatest catches"!! This was my attempt at having family-themed costumes at very low budget. I made Leah's costume and it was adorable to watch her flop around in it!!

We were given this snuggle suit from Alex's sister, Coralee. It is a 0-3 month suit and Leah was just over 2 months. "I can't put my arms down!!" So cute!

One of the main reasons we dressed Leah as a fish is so we could do THIS to her and not be 'bad parents'!!! You have to have a fish face when you are a fish, right?

Fish in a net!! (And Alex's costume. For some reason, even though I KNOW I have all the pictures on the computer, since I got them on facebook somehow, most of them aren't showing up in my photo library.....can't find the family ones or the full body of Alex. Silly computer!)

She has been caught!!! She made a pretty cute fish.

We went to the town pumpkin walk and they had fun cut-outs. Leah had to be Yoda!!

We also had to get some fun family pictures all dressed in Orange for Halloween!! Orange is my absolute FAVORITE color, so I thought it was wonderful! Leah and I even had matching Orange toenails! Alex sometimes thinks I go a little crazy, but I think it's fun and cute! He's a good sport about it!! :)

Here is a cute video of our floppy fish baby!

I am hoping to get caught up a little bit tomorrow and show some more recent pictures, but for now, this is a recap of Halloween.....just in time for Thanksgiving!!! Enjoy!!!

Sounds of an angel sleeping

2011-11-01T09:31:00.003-06:00

We are very lucky to be graced with this sound every time Leah falls asleep. Sometimes it's louder, sometimes quieter. Sometimes it's longer and sometimes shorter. You never know when it will happen fast enough to grab the camera but last night Kristen got lucky and actually got it!

Projects!

2011-10-31T21:48:00.002-06:00

Just when you thought we couldn't fit a single new thing into our apartment.......we went and bought a bookshelf. It fits in the area right behind our bathroom door; in the kitchen. :)

We put our food on it. I had this brilliant idea to record all the food we have on a list. Then we add or erase (with dry erase markers on the laminated list) the new food we purchase or the food we use. This way, if we need to use something, we don't have to empty the entire shelf looking for it and not find it. Instead, if we know we have it....emptying the shelf is worth it. It also helps us know what we run out of and need to buy. It has worked wonders!

I've been using my canner!!!!!!!!!!!!! I made lots of chicken noodle soup the other day and canned some of it. I haven't tried any, but it should be good.....the original soup was good before it got canned. I also was given a bag of pears. They didn't look very appealing to eat plain, so I canned them. We ate one can. They may have been slightly over-ripe when I canned them, but they have a delicious flavor. So tasty!!!!

I went and visited a friend who is on bed rest for the last part of her pregnancy. I took a craft for us to do. We made felt elephants and they turned out really cute, if I do say so myself.

A friend of mine taught me how to make these pumpkins. Now I have Halloween decorations for the inside of my house. (The witch mom made is on our front door!).

I'm also pretty excited because I've sold 3 booties and 1 hair clip at the consignment place. :) Now I need to make more booties to put out and hopefully sell. Next on my list is making a quiet book for Leah. It is going to be an ABC's book with something to do/touch/feel/play with on every page. I may post pages as I get them done, or you may have to wait a few months for the finished product. It just depends on how ambitious I am!!! :)

Note the new Background!

2011-10-19T08:17:00.000-06:00

I changed the background picture... did anyone notice before I say something about it now? Well yeah we think it's really cute! We took pictures in Logan Canyon on Saturday and had fun:

If you want to see more: Click here!

Blessing!!

2011-10-12T11:55:00.004-06:00

Here is proof that Leah is starting to fatten up! Don't you just want to kiss those adorable, squishy cheeks?

She was sleeping so cute!!

Mommy with her blessed baby!!

I made the hair clip flower, dress, and shoes! I didn't even try the dress on her until 5 minutes before sacrament meeting. I'm glad it fit. And she was adorable. An absolute angel baby!!

Hello!! Look at me in my cute dress!!

These flowers are tasty!!

:) I'm cute!

The men in the circle. (Left to Right) Seth Geisler, Seth Hansen, Bobby Johnson, Mike Rigby, Alex (Daddy) with Leah, Daniel Roberts, Stony Olsen, Dad Ned Christensen, Dad Steve Thornbrue, Bishop Donald McMahon.

Daddy with our angel baby!!

Family!!!!!!!! :)

We sure love you, Leah! You were absolutely perfect on your blessing day. You looked so cute in your white dress that I made for you and the sparkly blanket that Great Grandma Jo made. We had lots of family come to celebrate you being blessed. It was great to see everyone!! Thanks for coming!!

Our little weed is growing fast

2011-10-05T18:49:00.000-06:00

Our little weed has been changing so much. She is growing like you'd never believe. It seems like just yesterday that she was so tiny and just months ago that she was non-existent. Everyone around has been noticing how fast she has grown too! She definitely is putting more meat on those bones... she's gonna need it for the winter. Her color is getting better and she is looking more normal in tone. We have noticed that she really loves to soak up the sun and just can't get enough... especially these last few days when it has been cloudy and stormy. People even say that she looks just like her mother and father more and more every day. Time just keeps going by so much faster every day.

I've been so busy the last few weeks trying to get ready for some pretty hard math tests and Kristen has been very busy with everyday life too so we haven't really had the time to keep you all up to date. I know everyone has been dying to see how much she has grown so I'll get to it and post a picture for you now!

Ha! You all thought I was talking about Leah until now didn't you?!

Happy Thoughts

2011-10-03T04:05:00.002-06:00

My friend has a very cute blog called My Happy Thought. She blogs about happy stuff all the time!!! Her happy thoughts include Disneyland, Halloween, photography, fairies, princesses and happily ever after! She made it to having 100 followers and is doing a giveaway. I get an extra entry from mentioning her blog on my blog, so this is it!! :)
Since she got me thinking about Halloween, I have been trying to think about what we should be. I think it would be fun to have a family theme costume.....dad, mom, and brand new baby. Anyone have any ideas of what would be cute, cheap, and easy to make?
Also, she makes me want to go to Disneyland SO bad. Alex has never been. When Leah is old enough to have someone watch her, we want someone to come to Disneyland with us and do a trade-off......I watch your kid(s) while you play, you watch mine while we have fun, etc. Who wants to come to Disneyland with me?

My happy thoughts:
Alex; he brought me chocolate, did the dishes, and gave me a back rub yesterday! Love him!! Cuddling up with a good movie, going on walks together, searching real estate websites to find our dream home (or a better apartment), rearranging our apartment, games, dates, love notes, surprises!

Leah; likes to be up in the middle of the night to give me a chance to write this blog. Silly girl! Staring at her, trying to get her to smile, having singing time, her funny grunting when trying to get her hand out of being swaddled, sneezes, cuddling!

Family; calling my mom 3 times a day, playing games with siblings, talking with my cousin on facebook almost every day, tickling nieces and nephews!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; including the recent General Conference: and Uchtdorf's talk at the Relief Society session!! The Book of Mormon, Plan of Salvation, Temples!

Rain; the smell, the fresh-ness, lightning, puddle stomping...

Using new recipes and having them turn out!

Making baby booties!

Our neighbor friends; playing games, sharing food, randomly walking in to their apartment to say hi, laughing, talking, telling jokes!

Camping, hiking, playing at the park, going on walks, staring at my baby, reading books, discovering new things, finding ways to make daily life easier (menu planning, chore lists, schedules, to-do lists), stuffed animals, and ORANGE!!

Those are a few of my happy thoughts! What are some of yours?

Leah again!

2011-09-23T19:46:00.003-06:00

I took some really good pictures with our nice new camera:

What do you think? Can we go pro yet? Jk.

Demolition Derby, Church, and Cute Baby!!!

2011-09-12T13:45:00.003-06:00

On Saturday we went to the Cache Valley Demolition Derby. Our friends the Bergs and the Dearingers were there, too!!! (Notice how the girls pose cute, and the boys are silly! I'm sensing the need to crop this picture! jk.)

This is what Leah thought of the Derby!!

Here is our little family at the Derby.....with a pile of smoking trucks in the background! Oh yeah!!! :)

During the second heat, one of the trucks got pushed over the edge and flipped upside down. They had to bring in the fire truck, ambulance, and paramedic vehicles and use the 'jaws-of-life' to cut the driver out of his truck. He was probably upside down for about 40 minutes, but he was fine! Because of that, they brought in a big water truck and sprayed down the arena so the next trucks wouldn't have as much traction to hit so hard and cause as much damage. It was a big, muddy mess, but it was still awesome!! Right when they were getting ready for the final smash down, it started raining lightly. Then 2 minutes later the power went out and the whole arena went pitch black. They ended up canceling the last part because the power never came back on. Turns out that half of the city was out of power for 2 hours.

This was Leah's outfit on Saturday. Newborn size. Notice how baggy the pants are. I bet she could fit in them twice!! I sure love my tiny, little baby!!

Saturday night I made these!!

So they would match her outfit....And so she'd match me!!!I've had my skirt for a long time, so when we found out we were having a girl, I used the scraps to make the dress, diaper cover, and scrap flower. Also notice the super huge baby tights. It's my favorite!! And the shoes completed the whole ensemble!

She started fussing when I laid her down for a nap. Apparently she wanted to wear a necklace instead of a headband. Silly girl!!

Church was exhausting!!But she slept through the whole thing. Today I thought I'd capture more pictures while she was asleep. She's too wiggly to photograph when she's awake. All the pictures turn out blurry because she moves around too much. So, enjoy the sleepy pictures! We sure think she's adorable!!!

My Birthday!

2011-09-05T20:23:00.000-06:00

So, since Kristen said that I should buy something for myself for my birthday, I ordered a spool of LED light strip. I spent most of the day today installing part of it in the car and here is what it looks like:

I even wired up a switch in the dashboard to turn them on and off with. Yeah, some people think I'm weird or wonder what's the point and my answer is that they are cool! I would put them under the kitchen cabinets if we owned this apt. but since we don't I'm not going to put them in. Anyone with a nice kitchen though, who would let me put them in... the lights come fairly cheap for the high-end look and value they add... pay me well enough and you will have a glorious kitchen with fabulous lighting! Pay me super-duper well and I'll do your car like mine too!

Keep on reading below to the other post that Kristen wrote today!

More Leah!!!

2011-09-05T12:52:00.005-06:00

Going to church!! I decided that we could make it to sacrament meeting this week. It was fun to show her off to all our ward friends.

Sleeping so happy and contented.

Daddy's Cutie!

I think the doctors lied to us. She's only 12 inches long, not 18. :)

I was doing my hair and wanted her close to me, so I put her in the sink.

Cute snuggle baby. And check out our garden in the background!!

Floppy!!

Sorry about the clash of colors....the orange wall, my different orange shirt, my orange bag, Leah in pink and Alex in red. Besides that, it's a great family picture!!!

After a sponge bath!

Showing off her cute outfit!

So, everyone knows how unpredictable sneezes are. Leah's sneezes are so cute, though, we had been trying forever to get some on video. The first was my attempt to be ready when the ceiling fan was blowing on her face. The second was just to get her cute kicking and I was lucky to catch some sneezes at the end, too!! She loves to be sprawled out to kick and flail her arms and legs. It frustrates her to be bundled and not have access to her arms. We sure do love our little princess!!

And lastly, a shout out to Alex. Today is his birthday!!! I had all these plans to get him something special, do whatever he wanted, make his favorite dinner/dessert, etc. Instead, Leah was born. So I told him to buy himself what he wanted and we can do whatever he chooses today. I figured Leah was a pretty good early birthday present (even though we joked about me being early and going into labor on Labor Day. Ha ha!!).
I couldn't ask for a better husband (and daddy to our baby girl)!!! He is completely amazing with how much he does for both of us. Specially when he'll get up with her at night so I can sleep a little longer. Or bring her to me in the morning. It's funny because Leah will get fussy in the morning, but she doesn't want to eat....as soon as she's brought into bed with us she'll sleep another hour. We love our cuddling time with this precious angel baby. We couldn't ask for anything more. She is absolutely perfect and patient as we are adjusting to parenthood!!!
Happy Birthday, Alex!!! I love you so, so much!!! :)

Leah Sage Christensen

2011-08-29T22:15:00.009-06:00

Pictures!!! Enjoy!!!! I have also written the entire story in the previous post for those of you who are interested. It's pretty detailed for my records, but some of you might enjoy it.

Here I am just finding out that we are actually going to have our baby within the next day.

It's going to be a c-section, so Alex got ready in his scrubs. Because everything happened so fast, we didn't have time to get nervous. I thought that around week 39 we'd start freaking out a little bit, but instead, HELLO, now we have a baby!!!

Leah Sage Christensen
5 lbs 9 oz
18" long

Just out of my tummy, getting all cleaned up.

It took a while to get a real 'family' picture, since they took her to the NICU so fast. This was my first trip down to visit her. And we finally had our real camera now, because Alex ran home to grab some essentials. Who knew I'd need the 'hospital bag' packed 4 weeks early?

All of the things she was hooked up to. Poor baby! She was in the NICU a total of 40 hours. Not bad for being 4 weeks early. We are so grateful that she is so healthy!!
Welcome to the world, Leah. This is when she's finally in our room with us. No more monitors for either of us. Just the ability to spend time together and loving every second and every little thing about her.

The world can be a difficult place, but her face and cry are so cute!! :)

Yay, we get to have her in our room with us and she gets some quality Daddy time. Thank you, Alex, for all you did to help me get sleep, keeping me updated on how our baby was doing in the first few hours, taking care of me, helping me in and out of bed, and doing everything I needed. I know it wore you out and you got as little (or less) sleep than I did, but I sure appreciate everything you did to help get our precious daughter here.
My gorgeous gown!! But loving spending time with my baby, and not having to go to the NICU to see her.
The 'going-home' outfit. The nurses would often wrap her up like a burrito baby. She looked like a head and a torso. This pictures shows how she likes to curl up her legs, so it looks like she's only 12" long instead of 18" when her legs are stretched out. So cute!!

Drowning and uncomfortable in her car seat.

Funny story, the onsie came from a pile that Annie gave us and the hat came from a neighbor who gave us a box full of clothes. They match. Cute!!Blurry, because she kicks her legs so much, but this is day 4 of life and I'm showing how her foot is still bruised. It was pretty black the first 2 days, but getting more and more pink as they days go on. Also, the toe right next to the big toe on each foot was sticking straight up when she was born. We are glad they are now matching the rest of her toes.
Grandpa Steve (my dad) holding Leah. She is pretty much the most content baby I have ever known. And I'm so lucky she's mine. She basically never cries. Only fusses a little bit if I'm not fast enough finishing a diaper change or getting food into her mouth. Other than that, she sleeps, kicks, sneezes (that are cute enough to melt my heart), smiles, hiccups, and looks around when her eyes are open. An absolute angel baby!!!

Concerned kissy face!!!

Hello, Daddy!! This bow is bigger than my head!! Welcome home from your first day of school. I'm glad you only have 3 hours of classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and one more class Wednesday nights this semester. That means you will get to spend lots and lots of time with ME!!!

Finally getting some Mommy time after having so many visitors the past few days. I can't get enough of this girl. Every time I look at her I am filled with so much love and amazement. Heavenly Father trusts us enough to be her parents and has given us the most incredible opportunity to raise her. The instant love of a parent for a child is more than I could have ever imagined. Helps me realize the love Heavenly Father has for me and how much my parents love me as well. What an amazingly wonderful thing!!

4 1/2 days after delivery. Ok, so I still look pretty fat, but it seems SO much smaller than I was a few days ago. It's nice to not have her head poking me in the ribs all the time!!

Photo shoot!! Thanks, Annie for the outfit and bow. They are adorable on her.

Glowing in her little light bed. Let those special lights heal you tonight, little Leah. Mommy and Daddy want to hold you again. Biliruben beds are so much cooler than they used to be. She doesn't have to be fully exposed underneath a harsh light and have to wear a mask because of the bright light. Instead, she gets velcro-ed into this cute little gown with arm holes and the light glows from under her.
Mommy and Daddy love you, princess Leah!!

THE STORY

2011-08-29T19:37:00.011-06:00

For those of you who want the whole story: This is mostly for my records, but I thought I would share:
PRE-HOSPITAL: Wednesday, August 24th, I reached my 35 weeks 6 days of pregnancy. I had been having diarrhea problems for 3 weeks, not feeling well, spending most my life on the couch or the toilet, being kind of miserable. I kept thinking, "I can't do 4 more weeks of this...pregnant, sick, yuck." Well, at about 11:15am I got up off the couch to go to the bathroom and I started leaking. Normally if I am wetting my pants, my muscles can take over and stop it, but liquid just kept leaking out. Luckily I had been wearing a diaper because of the frequent diarrhea. Throughout the day, when I'd stand up from being on the couch, more liquid would freely flow. When Alex got home from work at 7 I said, "I think you should call the hospital and see what they say. My water may have broken, but I don't really know." He called, I talked to a doctor who said, "based on your description, you better come in and get it checked out." Alex asked if he could take a shower first, so he showered, I finished watching final Jeopardy, and at 8:00pm we headed to the hospital thinking that they'll check me and we'll probably get sent home.
GETTING CHECKED IN: We got to the hospital and I changed into the lovely gown, and they needed to get a pH strip of the fluid. Sure, now nothing comes out. Finally got a sample that showed up positive for being amniotic fluid. The nurse tried to check me, but couldn't get much, and then tried twice to get an IV in. 3rd try got me the IV and they started a saline drip, antibiotics (because my group b strep test results from Monday's appointment weren't back or recorded yet), and pitocin to start labor. I had been having some minor lower back cramping, but as soon as the pitocin started I got MAJOR back contractions. They were super close together and extremely painful. I probably lasted 20 minutes and then asked for an epidural. Alex called our neighbors, Daniel and Melissa, to have them come give me a blessing. Melissa asked if we needed anything else, and Alex had her bring nail polish because I've always said I wanted my toes painted when I'm in labor. They came, and I was given an incredible blessing that everything would be alright for me and the baby. The anesthesiologist came and did the epidural and it was the most wonderful relief I have ever experienced.
CHECKING: My doctor was out of town, so an on call doctor came in to check me. With the epidural, he was able to tell that I was 3 cm dilated, 90% effaced, and he thought he could feel her nose and lips, meaning that her face was towards the canal instead of the back of her head. They can still be born that way, but instead of being cone-head, they might be cone-faced and a little swollen by the time they were born. He called for an ultrasound just to check positioning and make sure everything would work out ok. The nurse told me that with first pregnancies people are usually in labor about 8+ hours, then 1-3 hours of pushing. I was then starting to prepare to have our baby within the next day. Ultrasound was turned on and......she was breech. Her head was under my ribs, like I always knew it was, and her toes were down by my cervix. The doctor checked me again and said, "Yep, there's her foot with 5 little toes." He had felt toes and her bum instead of a nose and lips like he thought the first time. Silly!
THE NEWS: Since my water was broken, and there wasn't much amniotic fluid left, they couldn't even try to force her to turn. Also, since her foot was poking through my cervix, they said it could be dangerous to have her normal, but we should probably do a c-section. I said, "Ok, we could do a c-section. That'll work if it gets her here ok." Definitely not in my original plans, but people have babies like this all the time, I guess it would be ok. The anesthesiologist added something to my epidural to numb me even more and they started to prepare everything to wheel me to the operating room. I thought, "NOW? First I had 4 more weeks to prepare for this, then I had at least a day, now I have 2 minutes and we'll have our baby. Yikes!!"
THE OPERATING ROOM: I was wheeled down the hall into the operating room at 11:58 (the whole time I was thinking, "this is like a movie. It can't be real. I'm being wheeled down the hall of a hospital, through the double doors, placed on a skinny little table with the light above it). Then I started getting nervous. I started shaking quite a bit and had to poke my leg and make sure it was still there. How am I going to handle this? They made sure I was numb, put up the shield, had Alex sit up by my head and hold my hand (definitely needed that), gave me a little oxygen, and cut me open. The whole sensation was really weird because I couldn't feel any pain, but I could feel them doing stuff; like I was numb, but there was pressure and some pushing. Really weird. A few minutes later they said she was out. 12:11 am. I waited for a cry and, sure enough, there she was. My little angel that came straight from heaven right into that operating room to be with us.
THE BUMMER: We honestly didn't think we were going to have our baby, so when we came to the hospital all we had was my purse and our cell phones. WE WERE HAVING A BABY AND WE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A CAMERA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At least cell phones have cameras on them. It would have been sad to miss the first minutes of her life.
OUR BABY: Because she was 4 weeks early, they took her to clean her up and check everything and make sure she was ok. Alex was over there taking pictures and watching and I could sort of see her off to the side. Apgar scores of 8 and 9. 18 inches long. 5 lbs 9 oz. And a purple foot, since it had been kicking through my cervix. Lungs were great, though, thank heavens. They wrapped her up and set her on my chest for a second, but I was still being stitched up. Then Alex got to hold her for a second. They It took quite a while to be stitched. They needed to take her for more tests and checks, so Alex went with her.
RECOVERY: While on the skinny little table, they rolled me sideways to take the epidural out. I almost felt like I was going to fall off, but I had no control over anything. They lifted me back onto a regular hospital bed and I was taken to a little place where I had to stay for an hour being constantly monitored. The blood pressure cuff checked every 5 minutes, they took my temperature, made sure I could wiggle my toes still, put cuffs on my legs that would alternate squeezing to prevent blood clots, gave me a catheter, and I sat there waiting to hear about my baby. They finally brought her in, said her blood sugar was low, had me try to nurse (for about 30 seconds....hardly gave me a chance), and wheeled her away again. Alex went with.
NAME: Alex and I had a list of a few names we liked and had to wait until we saw her to decide which one fit. For me it was definite, and Alex agreed. I then gave some suggestions about some middle names I had thought of and Alex chose, and we settled it. Her name is LEAH SAGE CHRISTENSEN.
RECOVERY ROOM: The place that became my home. Once in my room, they gave me IV pain meds and checked my vitals every 20-30 minutes for the next 5 or so hours. Try getting sleep that way. Alex came to me after about 3 hours. Apparently she would have to stay in the NICU for a while and he needed to be with me. I had the little thing on my finger that checks breathing/heart rate or something. It kept beeping every time I would take a drink, or if my breathing changed. It was super sensitive and super annoying. Then everyone and their cousin decided they needed to come in. Hi, I'm the nurse. Hi, I'm the social worker here at the hospital. Hi, I'm the head nurse. Hi, I'm the.......on and on and on!! Zero sleep. One of the coolest things about the hospital is that they have recently changed over to doing room service. I had a menu and when I was ready for food, I called them and ordered EXACTLY what I wanted to eat, and they would bring it to me 15-20 minutes later. The food was pretty decent, too. I recommend the chocolate cream pie. Had it 4 times!! Poor Alex had to scrounge around, though. Thanks to a few different neighbors who brought food for him sometimes. They do have unlimited juice and soda for the dads. And the nurses are always willing to go out of their way to get you anything you need.....juice every time they came in, lanolin, extra pillow for me, more blankets for Alex, one of their own roll-y desk chairs that was more comfortable for Alex to use, pain meds, ice packs, etc. I was spoiled rotten.
VISITING: As soon as I could semi-move and had feeling enough in my legs that I could stand up, they had me get up and into a wheel chair. You have no idea how much you use your ab muscles until that muscle has been cut in half and you notice every time it is being used. Getting out of bed was difficult, but I needed to see my baby. They took me down to the NICU and she was hooked up to an IV with fluids and antibiotics (because of a possible infection), some other monitors, and was in a heat box. She was SO cute. Alex and I were instantly smitten. So much love overwhelmed us, it was incredible. We could hold her, even though the cords and tubes were in the way. I tried feeding again, but they kept saying her blood sugar levels were low so they needed to supplement with formula. I thought, "Hey, give my boobs a chance to try. Don't be so quick to disregard my attempts to give her food." There is a really cool thing, though, that helped kill two birds with one stone. It is a little plastic device called a nipple shield that goes on me, but is easier for her to latch on to, and then a little tiny tube can be inserted to squirt formula in, but still stimulates me at the same time. That was kinda cool, and I was glad she was getting enough food.
THE ROUTINE: People had said that Leah could possibly be in the NICU for a few days, 5-7 at the most, but probably at least 3. I started (struggling to walk more and more) to go down to the NICU every 3 hours to try feeding her. I'd get there, feed and hold her for an hour, go back to the room for 2, then get up and go visit her again. Basically zero sleep again. I wanted to be with her so much, but I needed sleep. Not much luck. This went from the time she was born early Thursday morning, throughout the day, and all that night. At midnight on Thursday night I finally got my catheter out and the IV stopped. Yay! Friday morning the on-call pediatrician said that the 'possible infection' lab results came back great, she could be weaned off the IV and probably come up to our room. REALLY? She won't have to stay there as long as was thought and we might get her in our room with us. Hooray. I finally got my IV out at 8 in the morning on Friday, and was machine free!! I was also given the ok to shower. Sweet!! I was nervous to look at my incision and made Alex look first. By the time Leah's 4:00 feeding came, they brought her to me instead of me going down. She was released from all her machines, too!!!!!
NIGHT: Alex was a life saver, and helped SO much during the night in order to let me sleep. We would both be awake after every little sound and squirm she would make. It was hard to sleep knowing that we were the ones responsible now instead of having nurses be available. People kept coming in, less frequently, though, and took my vitals, gave me pain meds, took Leah's vitals, did the car seat test, etc.
MORNING: Thinking that I needed to be there 72 hours after surgery (meaning late Saturday night, so more like Sunday morning), I was planning another long day and long night. When the baby dr came in he said she was fine to leave whenever, just make sure her biliruben levels were checked first. When my dr came in we talked for a second and he asked if I had any questions. I said, "When can I go home?" He said, "Let the nurses know and they'll get everything together so you can leave." Basically a whole day earlier than I thought. Hooray!! I had my staples taken out, was taught the 'things-to-know-about-taking-care-of-baby' stuff, got a vaccination shot, packed up the room and we were OUT OF THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOME: Basically right when we got home, my mom was here from Salt Lake to visit and help. Can't live without moms. Thanks!! We also had some wonderful and fantastic friends, Bobby and Cyndi come over to help us rearrange/reorganize/set up the crib/clean up/ etc. We couldn't have done it without you. Alex took a well deserved and much needed nap first, then we got everything put together. We expected to have 4 more weeks to get things done but.....surprise!!! Later in the evening Alex's brother and his wife, Alan and Kim, came up to visit from Spanish Fork. They completely SPOILED Leah with so many cute new things. (Thank you!)
SUNDAY: Alex's parents came up first thing in the morning to be there for Alex to be set apart as the 2nd councilor in the Elders Quorum. (Funny story: Last week, when he was called, the Stake President told us to invite our families to the setting apart. We thought, "Ha, we wouldn't dream of having them come up that long way for something not super special." We told the stake president, "Not unless the baby comes, but we hope not since she's still 4 weeks early." He said, "Yeah, you could have her Friday, parents could come up Sunday for both reasons....Ha ha!" Well, President, it happened. And Thanks to Alex's family for coming up for that as well. They stayed until about 4:30 and my family showed up just before 4:30 and stayed until about 8. We have fun showing her off, however my favorite part about being a mom is that no matter how many people she gets passed around to and how much I don't get to hold her when family is around, she always HAS to come back to me eventually!!! And I never have to say good-bye. She's all mine.....and Alex's!!!
MONDAY: A day without visitors. It was kind of nice to have Leah to ourselves this morning. School started for Daddy, so he was gone to 3 classes this morning. When he was done, Leah had to have her biliruben checked. After that we went to WalMart to grab the last few essentials we needed and while we were there the lab results came back and she was pretty high; getting into the critical range. So, they sent a guy from IHC to bring us a light bed for her to stay in the rest of the day and night. We'll go have her checked again in the morning and hopefully she'll be able to be off of it tomorrow. It makes me sad not being able to hold her right now. Makes feeding time all the more special since I get to take her out for a few minutes!! I guess this blog post would have NEVER been written if I could hold her, so it ends up being a good thing. I needed this written down somewhere!!

Update of my fat belly!!

2011-08-04T14:34:00.004-06:00

The other day we bought raspberries and blueberries. My favorite treat! I especially love to put a blueberry inside the raspberry and eat them together. I went to the fridge one time to get some, and there they were already made. Alex made a bunch of 'blazberries' just for me. If that's not true love, I don't know what is!!!

Here is me at 30 weeks. I was also getting a hair cut that day, so it is showing how long my hair used to be. I got about 6 inches off. There is no after picture, though, because I haven't really done my hair down since then. It just feels much better and isn't so scraggly anymore!!

32 weeks!! 7 months!! That's only 8 weeks left. Yikes and Yippee!! This week I've started to get back pain and baby in the rib when I sit, foot and other back pain when I stand, and an occasional swollen right foot. Pretty much I feel the best when I'm laying down. It gives baby enough room to get out from under my ribs, and stretches out my spine so my back quits hurting. Too bad there aren't very many things to do while laying down.....so I do what I can, then rest for a while, then do some more, and go back to resting!! It's a good routine!!

33 weeks!!! 7 left!! My regular shirts are stretchy enough to still fit width-wise, however most are not quite good enough length-wise and have a hard time covering up all of the stretchy part of my pants. Therefore, I got to go shopping for some maternity shirts!!! The one pictured is not one of my new purchases. It is one of 3 short-sleeved maternity shirts that work that were loaned to me by my sister. Seeing as how I'm 7 months pregnant and it's August, short sleeves are a must. I bought myself 4 more. :) Yay for being able to feel cute while I feel fat!!This is the stroller/car seat combination we bought. I LOVE it!!! It's super cute and brown plaid, so it'll still work if our next child is a boy. It is also baby trend brand, so the car seat handle is the cool triangle kind that allows multiple carrying positions. I also bought the fabric I'm going to use for the car seat cover. I'll post pictures when I get it done. I can't wait to see the car seat in our car......with our baby girl in it!!

Kristens Crafts are now sold in Stork Landing!

2011-07-29T19:33:00.003-06:00

We were recently wandering through Stork Landing and noticed they had a consignment section and were accepting consignments. I thought it would be perfect for Kristen's booties, so I inquired and earlier this week it became a done deal! We took in 6 hair clips and 15 booties for them to sell. They wanted a display for them so we came home and I got right to work building the 3-tiered wood stand they now sit on.

By the way Kristen's Crafts link is on the left side of this page where you can see all of the different booties. Janelle and other crafty people... this consignment deal is a really good one (no booth fee). If you want we can get you the information.

I also posted twice today so don't stop after just reading this post, but keep reading!

Our ward outlaw pinewood derby

2011-07-29T19:14:00.001-06:00

So two weeks ago we had a pinewood derby in our ward. No rules other than it could not have any combustibles/flames. It was very fun and definitely recommended for all Elders Quorums out there. I have been waiting to post because a guy in our ward videoed the whole thing and was going to post it on YouTube but I haven't heard about it yet. When it is available I will add it to this post. Anyways, I think my car ended up in 3rd place. I put an electric motor in it and a fan to help push it along. It also had white LED headlights and red LED taillights. It took more time (and money) than it was really worth, but super fun.

I helped Kristen build her ladybug car a little bit... we drilled it out everywhere possible and filled it with steel rod (the black dots).

You may have noticed?

2011-07-16T14:37:00.001-06:00

For those of you who are like me and read posts but just don't take/make the time to comment I changed the buttons at the bottom of the posts from saying "Cool" and "Lame" to "Like" and "Dislike" (Interesting and Funny haven't changed... and unfortunately it reset the counters on all older previous posts but that's okay). I'm not trying to say that we have made it as a substitution for commenting but we like to know you're alive (even though there's no way on earth to tell who clicked it) and have read the post at least!

So far in July.....

2011-07-07T19:34:00.004-06:00

Alex (light blue shorts, white shirt) decided to run the "Fun Run" in Moroni on the 4th of July. His nephew (black shorts, white shirt) convinced him that it would be fun. We must note that Alex has not been running for at least a year. Then all the sudden doing a 5k. Yikes!! He was/is pretty sore. But he still came in with a time of 25 minutes 12 seconds. I couldn't even do that if I was training for years. Good job, Alex!!! Maybe you can practice this year so that it won't be so miserable next time you participate in a race. :)

This is Alex and Randy. They stayed together for about the first half of the race. However, since Alex hasn't been training, on my count, Randy came in 18th and Alex 27th. Way to go!!!

Alex had a pretty steady stride. And at least was faster than that guy!! (A lot of people were running. Alex was definitely in the first 3rd that came in.)

28 weeks=6 months 1 week. I can't complain too much. If I stand too long my feet hurt, if I sit too long my back hurts, I frequently use the little girls room, I can't bend over very well without feeling squished, and it's hard to get comfortable at night. It's all part of the adventure, though, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Our window air conditioner has made a world of difference in the heat category, though. I can at least fall asleep at night.

29 weeks=6 1/2 months.....I actually look pregnant now, instead of 'thick' and/or 'fat'. People now notice and comment. Hooray!!! So, I've had a pretty easy, yet eventful pregnancy. For some reason I have high blood pressure. It has been consistent the entire time, but now that I'm in my third trimester it went up slightly. To monitor, in case of pre-eclampsia, I've had extra blood tests, a 24-hour urine sample, Dr's appointments every 2 weeks instead of every month, an extra ultrasound :), etc. Everything always comes back great. My kidney and liver functions are good, baby girl is measuring right on schedule and she looks fine.....I just have high blood pressure. Who knows why? My doctor put me on a medication to help control my blood pressure and it makes me super sleepy. I'm hoping my body will get used to it eventually so I can do more than eat and sleep.

At 28 weeks, my fingers got slightly too swollen to wear my wedding ring. Unless I wanted a red/purple finger I had to keep it off. Because I still wanted to feel married, Alex bought me a beautiful, new, glass-diamond ring in a much bigger size. It is good enough quality that it shouldn't turn me green, yet cheap enough that it wouldn't be sad if it got stuck and had to be cut off. :) WalMart is good for something!!This is the crib/playpen we got. Mom bought me one for my birthday that was really cute and had a fun mobile, but since our apartment is so small, I opted to trade it out for a playpen with the raised changing table (so I won't have to change her on our bed!!). There is no way we would be able to fit a crib AND a changing table, unless they are one and the same. This is probably NOT where it will be located, because it kind of blocks off access to all the cupboards. However, this is how our apartment is set up right now and I wanted to see what the crib looked like before we stick it in storage for 2+ more months. We'll figure it out when the time gets closer. (In the 28 week picture, you can see the one mom bought for us if you enlarge the image). Close-up view. It is a cute pastel-y tan color with some bugs and a leafy pattern on it. The bottom can also be raised (as pictured), so we won't have to bend all the way down to the floor to put her down. Also, the side compartments will be nice for diapers and supplies!We are getting very excited for our little girl to join our family. From our ultrasound this morning, she is still a girl!!!!! And she is supposedly 2lbs 15oz. Not quite big enough to come out yet, but well on her way and right on target. She is moving around a lot more and sometimes has parties in my tummy. Alex had fun on Sunday morning just watching and feeling her move around for about 10 minutes. We have 2 shelves of pink things in our closet and can't wait for her to wear everything and to see her cute face (which she was hiding today). Can't wait to meet you, little princess! We love you so much already!!

The Project!!

2011-07-07T19:00:00.007-06:00

You may recall Grandma and Grandpa's old mailbox........!!! It is duct taped on to the metal thing, and the metal was tied around the telephone pole with rope. Kinda tacky. And it would always get knocked over in the winter when the snow plows came by. Hence, Alex and I had this brilliant idea to build a stone mailbox for them. We went up last Wednesday night and started first thing (7:00am) Thursday morning. The finishing mortar was slapped on around 9:45pm. Here's the progress in pictures.

The old mailbox.

We started with a cement foundation.

Then the rocks went up. Grandma helped a lot.

And they kept going up. (Note the beautiful hourglass shape. Totally on purpose!!!)

Alex working hard.

Alex and Grandma nearing the top. The mailbox is set in, we're just trying to figure out how to round it over the top and give it a cap.

Obviously we didn't figure out the top very well. Grandma says it's crooked-y. But hey, it won't get knocked over by the snow plow. We know that for sure!!! I don't care if it looks funny. We made it with love and that's what counts, right?

Ta Da!!

Summer life!!

2011-06-20T14:39:00.004-06:00

This is how my summer is going..........
I'm just getting more and more pregnant!! This is a 25.5 week picture. I am 27 weeks tomorrow (meaning 3rd trimester!!!). I have been having slight problems with high blood pressure, but they did some labs to check kidney and liver function and everything looks good. I just need to take an iron supplement, but low iron is a typical pregnancy problem. My doctor is checking up on me every 2 weeks now, just to make sure the high blood pressure doesn't escalate into anything more serious.
In other news, Alex felt our baby girl move the other day. She has been getting a lot stronger and can finally be felt from the outside!! So cute!!

The other day I rode my bike to the Willow Park Zoo with a friend of mine. The ride to the zoo was great. The ride back was pretty difficult......being uphill the WHOLE way home. This zoo is more of a glorified aviary, but there are a few cool things. Enjoy the tortoise!! He walked from the shack to the opposite fence pretty fast. I was impressed. There was another little turtle in a different area that kept trying to get through the chain link fence. The could get both arms and his head through, but his shell was obviously too big, so he'd try the next hole. Poor thing! I wanted to pick him up and help him over. He probably tried to get through at least a dozen times.
You might have to enlarge this picture to see the wallaby in the shadow of the tree. It was cute!

Mother peacock with 2 babies. Shortly after the picture was taken, she sat down and her babies disappeared underneath her. Cute!!

My favorite!!! The albino porcupine. It was so dead asleep on that branch and its arms are dangling down. Again, you might want to click on it to enlarge the picture and get the full effect. It's just SO relaxed, I'm glad he could keep his balance on that branch!!

And last, but not least,.....Alex got 37 pepper plants from his boss who is doing a pepper farm this year and had leftovers. We decided that our apartment wasn't doing anything with this plot of dirt that we'd take over and use it as a garden. Half of it is under the stairs, but it all gets light at some point in the day. Besides the 37 peppers, we added 3 tomatoes, a zucchini, and a row of bush peas in the back. There are also 4 solar lights that add a decorative look. And we can't forget our free pine trees that we got from Lowe's on Earth Day. They are thriving in the black pots. New growth can be found every day.
The only down side to this garden.....we don't have a hose. I make about 12 trips with a 3 liter bottle every morning and every night. I use it as my exercise!! So far nothing is dead!!! :) Here's hoping we get at least a few things from our plants. If all goes well, we'll be feeding the entire neighborhood a bunch of peppers! Yum!

24 weeks!!

2011-06-04T12:59:00.000-06:00

Kristen's Talk

2011-06-03T15:30:00.003-06:00

For those of you....Mom.....who want to read the talk I gave in church. The black is what I had planned to say. The red is what I had to improvise. :)

As was announced, my name is Kristen Christensen, which can be a lot of fun when you have to give your name out a million times. My husband, Alex, and I have been in the ward almost 2 1/2 years and we feel like we are seasoned veteran members of the ward and everyone should know who we are. So many people have been moving in and out recently, though, that we feel like we don't know anyone any more. I'll introduce you to us a little bit, then I hope you'll all introduce yourselves to us later so we can get to know more of you and become friends.
Alex and I met at Snow College in a P.E. class and the Institutes courtship and marriage class. I like that combination because it means that Alex saw me at my sweaty, nasty, grubby worst and at my flirty, cute, spiritual best and he fell in love with all of it. After some fun dating stories, that you'll have to ask us about later, we cot married in October of 2008 and shortly after that we moved to Logan. I just barely graduated 3 weeks ago with my bachelors in Elementary Education and Alex is currently working towards Electrical Engineering if he can get through Calc 3 next semester. I am 5 months pregnant and we are expecting our little girl to join us around September 22. Right now I am lucky enough to stay home and do cooking, cleaning, and craft projects while Alex works 10+ hour days doing weeding, landscaping, and other odd jobs for various employers throughout the valley. We love being outside and being with other people. We also love games and we have over 65 to choose from, so honestly, if you're ever bored, come play games with us.
(I was the concluding speaker and Alex only left me about 5 minutes when I was planning on 10, so instead of my written intro, I said this......."First of all, it's great to speak on Memorial Day weekend because there are only 20 couples here. Second, it's great to go last because half of you are already asleep. It looks like Alex only left me 4 1/2 minutes, so we'll skip the intro. We've been married 2 1/2 years. We like to play games, so come play games with us. Oh, and our little girl will join us in September, because she's a part of us, too!!")
We were asked to speak about Elder Russel M. Nelson's talk from this recent conference titled, "Face the Future with Faith". Brother Carter covered faith, Alex did hope, so I get charity. As I was first reading through the talk, I was impressed with how faith is nearly identical to testimony. We can say that we have a testimony of Jesus Christ or that we have faith in Jesus Christ. We can have a testimony of prayer, or faith that our prayers will be answered. Both faith and testimonies need to be personally developed and worked on daily. But how do we develop and strengthen our faith? Elder Nelson says that it is by being an example and by following the examples of others. He says, "All that the future holds in store for each sacred child of God [which is each of us] will be shaped by his or her parents, family, friends, and teachers. Thus our faith now becomes part of our posterity's faith later."
Going to family wards on fast Sunday is my favorite because you are guaranteed that at least a handful of kids will get up and say, usually in one breath, "I'd like to bear my testimony. I know the church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know President Monson is a true prophet. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." This simple, scripted testimony is learned from parents, teachers, and peers and may not be completely understood, yet those kids get up faithfully every month and repeat those words because of the examples they've seen around them. As they grow older, however, those simple memorized words become the foundation of their own personal testimony and the building blocks of their faith.
Most of us don't have children yet, although in this ward many of us are working on it. :) We all have spouses, though, which can be almost the same thing. And I mean that in the kindest way possible. We can all be better examples and teachers to our spouses and we can learn from them as well. Elder Nelson talks about trials, stresses and fears in our lives that can be combated by strengthening our faith. He says, "Start with your children [or spouses]. You...bear the primary responsibility to strengthen their faith. Let them feel your faith, even when sore trials come upon you. Let your faith be focused on our loving Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Teach that faith with deep conviction. Teach each boy or girl [or husband or wife] that he or she is a child of God, created in His image, with a sacred purpose and potential. Each is born with challenges to overcome and faith to be developed."
Faith, as well as testimonies, have to be taught and learned and practiced for each and every principle and doctrine of the gospel. Elder Nelson mentions how we need to have faith to keep ALL the commandments, faith to be obedient because "obedience allows God's blessings to flow without constraint." We also need faith in the Word of Wisdom, faith that our prayers will be answered, faith to be a full-tithe payer, and faith that through obedience we will receive the blessings of eternal life. Elder Nelson says that "your rewards come not only hereafter. Many blessings will be yours in this life." Malachi 3:10 says that the Lord of Hosts will "pour your out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."
Our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, love us SO much. They always want the best for us no matter what we've done, where we've come from, or how far we've strayed. They love us with a pure love. When we think of the 'pure love of Christ' a word should pop into your head. That word is charity. The Gospel Principles book defines charity like this...."Charity is that pure love which our Savior Jesus Christ has. He has commanded us to love one another as He loves us. The scriptures tell us that charity comes from a pure heart. We have pure love when, from the heart, we show genuine concern and compassion for all our brothers and sisters." That genuine concern and compassion for our brothers and sisters includes all acts of service to those around us. Last week the Firmages gave great talks and suggestions for how we can better seek out opportunities and motivation to serve. The savior gave many parables and stories about service as well as being a perfect example in His own life. He taught us that we should give food to the hungry, shelter those who have none, give clothes to the poor, visit the sick and comfort those who stand in need of comfort. This barely scratches the surface, but we already had a great reminder about service last week. Giving service isn't everything to do with charity, though. Charity is more about the desire and attitude behind service. 1 John 3:16-17 says, "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the bretheren. But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" To me this means that even if we do give to those in need, if we don't feel compassion and love for them, we don't have charity.
Service doesn't have to be a huge thing that takes time our of our day. Hymn 223 suggests that we reflect back on our actions of the day and ask "Have I done any good in the world today? Have I helped anyone in need?" Pres. Monson says, "There are hearts to gladden. There are kind words to say. There are gifts to be given. There are deeds to be done. There are souls to be saved." The way Pres. Monson worded this list leaves no room to not have charity. How can you gladden someone's heart and not love them? How can you speak kind words if you have angry feelings towards someone? How can you give gifts, do deeds, or save souls of people you hold grudges against? It is so much easier to serve when we have charity. The Apostle Paul taught that when we have charity we are filled with good feelings for all people. Alma 7:24 says, "And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works." Doing good works with an attitude of charity is one way we can become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. We can learn from His life and His examples for how we can better ourselves and draw closer to our Father in Heaven.
("I did have a really long scripture to share, but since I've already gone over our time and I need to be done....charity is good. I know that the church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know that Pres. Monson is a true prophet. I know and believe these things with all my heart and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.")..................If I'd had more time..................
I'd like to end with a scripture in Moroni 7:42-48. It reads, "42Wherefore, if a man have ^afaith he ^bmust needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope.
43And again, behold I say unto you that he cannot have faith and hope, save he shall be ^ameek, and lowly of heart.
44If so, his ^afaith and hope is vain, for none is ^bacceptable before God, save the ^cmeek and lowly in heart; and if a man be meek and lowly in heart, and ^dconfesses by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, he must needs have charity; for if he have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity.
45And ^acharity suffereth long, and is ^bkind, and ^cenvieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily ^dprovoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
46Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—
47But ^acharity is the pure ^blove of Christ, and it endureth ^cforever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.
48Wherefore, my beloved brethren, ^apray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true ^bfollowers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall ^cbe like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be ^dpurified even as he is pure."
Through our faith and our prayers I hope that we can all be filled with the pure love of Christ that we can show charity to our brothers and sisters and as Elder Nelson said, "overcome our fears and face the future with faith." We are promised that "when we are faithful, [Christ] and His angels will help us." I know that we can accomplish anything with the Lord on our side and that He is always there to help us whenever we need. I know that life's tough and things aren't always easy, but we are so lucky to be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and to have all the blessings that come with it. I hope that I will be able to be a better example of faith, testimony, and charity to my spouse, who I love dearly, my future children, and to those around me. I know that the pure love of Christ is with us always. I love the gospel and I am so grateful to be a part of it. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

2011-06-02T12:34:00.003-06:00

We tried to go fishing on Memorial Day!! Basically it wasn't raining, then we got in the car. Down pour the entire 15 minute drive. It looked like there was blue sky, and the wind was blowing the right direction, so we decided to stick it out. It stopped raining when we got there. Then 5 minutes later rain, hail, and huge gusts of wind. We were cold and miserable, but stayed for about 2 hours. Alex caught 2 fish and they came close enough to shore that we saw them and were about to grab onto them when they somehow escaped. Great!!! We didn't have to touch them, and our hands were too cold to touch the frozen water anyways. It turned out to be pretty fun, even though we almost froze to death.
This is the little dress, diaper cover, and scrap flower I made out of leftover fabric I had in my craft box. It was barely enough to make the newborn size, and I made up the diaper cover, so I hope it will fit our little girl at some point in her life. It still needs button holes (which I can't do on my machine) and some ribbon bows that go up on the bodice where the straps connect. The straps go on the inside, so the bows will cover up the button stitching.

Here is a close-up of what the buttons look like. Thanks Santa for leaving those in my stocking!! It also shows the scrap flower better. It is attached to a clip, so it can be attached to a headband.

Here is the hat I attempted to crochet. I don't follow crochet patterns very well, and technically it is the inside, but it looked better than the outside, so I flipped it inside out!!! It's kinda lumpy and who knows what size it'll fit, but hopefully it'll fit her at some point. I also made a little daisy flower that needs to be put on a clip for a headband. And that is my first attempt at making crochetted booties, also. They turned out looking similar to each other and are basically the same size!! Bonus. It's really difficult to make two identical things. Pretty good for a first attempt.

Ok, these booties I had to post because I think they turned out really cute!! I had a lady in Logan order them from me. Her family was getting family pictures taken and their theme was hot pink. She said, "Hot pink with a purple flower....." and this is what she got. I like them.

Before I could deliver the previous shoes to her, she requested that I make some black and red mary-jane style shoes. This is the result from that. And I think they are so darling. I might have to make more for our daughter.

As requested, here is 22 weeks.

And 23 weeks.
Right now I am 24 weeks, but I need Alex to be home longer than 2 seconds to take another picture!!! He works so hard and so long. Usually he leaves at 7:15am and gets home around 7:30pm. Today I saw him for 10 seconds as he ran in, grabbed lunch, and headed off to somewhere else. I'm so grateful that he works so hard and lets me stay home making our baby some cute clothes and accessories. Right now I am working on a baby blanket....just crocheting around the outside. I'll post pictures when I'm done. I think I'm going to stick in a movie and get busy crocheting to try and get it done today!!

:)

Our baby will be a GIRL!

2011-05-14T12:48:00.000-06:00

Polls closed with 14 votes for a boy and 4 votes for a girl. Funny thing is that 2 of the girl votes were US! At our appointment on Wednesday we found out that it will be a girl.

No, we don't have any names in mind and we won't name her until she's here... (so don't ask!) :)

We have a DVD of the whole ultrasound so it's pretty cool that we can have that memory forever!

Easter fun!!

2011-05-03T15:37:00.026-06:00

I decided to have Easter come a few hours early this year. Alex was at work on Saturday, so I took advantage of his absence to prepare the house for his return. (It wouldn't be so easy for me to get up before he does and do it Easter morning, so he got an early surprise). It started with a decorated door and instructions to follow the yarn that started around the doorknob.

The front room basically looked like this....look hard and you can see the yellow yarn wrapped around everything.

The bedroom/kitchen was next. :)

When Alex came home from work....SURPRISE!!! He was pretty worn out from working all day long, but I made him follow his yarn before doing anything else. (He couldn't take a shower until the yarn was removed anyways, since it went through the shower.)

Almost done. Keep winding. Every so often he would find a little York Peppermint Patty. My favorite was when the yarn went into the fridge, so he got a chilled patty!!

What did you find????

Be sure to look at all your goodies!!! The Easter Bunny sure loves you lots!!

Oh, WOW!! A kite, some body wash, Yahtzee hands down, the York patties (of course), a little cuddly moose friend for Alex and a turtle friend for Kristen. And the bottom was lined with mini cadbury eggs. Fun, fun!! P.S. The Yahtzee card game is pretty fun.

Easter was a beautifully warm day, we decided to celebrate by having our first barbecue of the year!!! Look how handsome that chef is!! Awe. He's a pro, because our chicken turned out perfectly delicious!!!

And, since I've had some requests, I finally got Alex to get a decent pregnant picture of me. This was at 19 weeks, and pretty well shows what I really look like, although some days and some outfits alter it slightly. Tomorrow I will be 20 weeks. Half way done already!! And one week after that (May 11th) we get to find out whether it's a boy or a girl. There are still a few days to vote.....so far the tally is 14 for boy and 4 for girl.

Busy, busy!!!

2011-04-20T16:24:00.012-06:00

A while ago, Alex brought me flowers and chocolate just because!!!
Then the next day he brought me more chocolate and a movie date. I'm so spoiled!!

I learned how to do the outside crocheting stitch on baby blankets. I think my first attempt turned out pretty good.

On Saturday night, Alex and I wanted to play games with anyone....friends/neighbors/whoever was available. Well, after being turned down by 4 different couples, we decided to forget playing games, so we drew up some plans for shoe shelves and we went to Home Depot.

Before: This is what our closet and shoe situation looked like before. (We found that little unclaimed shelf thing and have been using it for a while, but it always got super messy and we could never find a matching pair of shoes.) So.........

After: We built these!!!! Custom made pine shelves for our shoes. Plus an extra shelf for our accumulated baby things (including the fantastic orange purse I'm going to use as a diaper bag). :)

We were just using a hand saw to cut the boards to the right size and Alex's table saw to make them all the right width. Then, lucky for us, some new neighbors came to investigate what we were doing. He said, "I have a chop saw if you want to use it." WHAT? Here? In these apartments? You just happen to have a chop saw? Sure enough, he went inside and came back with a high-tech, fancy chop saw. In no time we were able to get all the pieces cut to the right size and all that was left was the assembly. Thanks again Daniel and Melissa Roberts. We would have been there all night!

I was also going to post a picture of what I look like being 18 weeks pregnant. I tried to get Alex to take a picture of me but I was either not showing enough, or I was forcing it to stick out too much (which is not what I look like). It didn't work. So, maybe we'll try for 19 week pictures!!

I have to brag...

2011-04-16T16:10:00.000-06:00

...because this kind of thing doesn't happen very often.

Yeah that says 100% on my calculus exam. I don't remember this kind of thing since high school.

More Dollhouse things (Because of Merilee)

2011-04-08T17:53:00.001-06:00

Merilee suggested that we make pasta things for our dollhouse jars. I had actually already thought about that but wasn't quite sure how I was going to do that. I saw a YouTube video where someone used something that was like a see-through-ish clay but I have never seen such things they spoke of. I used real spaghetti noodles! I must say I'm amazed at the strength of them. They are strong noodles. I used the Dremel to grind/sand them down to 1/32" because they would look way too big if I didn't. So about 2 hours and 4 noodle sticks later, here's what I have:

I really didn't plan on making spaghetti anytime soon but I couldn't not take on the challenge!

Oh yeah, I also made them a clock (of course it really works)! My mom gave us one of her old watches and I cut the nubs for the band off. If you have any old watches you're thinking of throwing out... save them for us please! I plan on making a grandfather clock with a slightly smaller one if I can find one and others.

Also... I just thought I would throw this in for those who desire to see it. I made a flash video in high school and it is kinda silly. To see it click here. This wasn't my finished version because my name changed to a rainbow color and there were more action things, and another fish, etc. (It will keep replaying, so don't let it keep replaying until you're sick!)

Little Dollhouse Things We've Made

2011-04-05T10:05:00.002-06:00

So we've been pretty into making real little things for our dollhouse that we bought. Too bad our apartment is too small to be able to build our dollhouse yet. It will be fun when we actually get to do it though. So far here are some of the really cool things we've made:

There are little soap bars... yes they are real soap, cotton balls, rock collection, gumballs, tissues (best of all... just see the video below), toilet paper, paper towels, and even real carpet... still in progress as you can see and it takes a very long time.

Sorry about the video quality... it is too close for the camera to even focus!

If anyone has any ideas of little things we could put in the jars that appear like something else etc. feel free to tell us about them. We want to put spices in them but to be the right size for most spices they would have to be nearly obliterated.

Weird Snow

2011-03-23T08:49:00.001-06:00

So I was walking to class yesterday and I was very thankful that the snow that came down in the night wasn't very deep like it usually happens to come. It was about two inches of snow where it hadn't melted yet. La de dah... on my way to my class I noticed this:

I thought it was cool that the snow had wrapped itself around the pole. Then I came across this:

Snow snakes! Really cool.

We're really into little things!!

2011-03-14T23:33:00.004-06:00

Alex and I are having a baby!!! I am almost 13 weeks, so nearly into my second trimester. We are due around September 22. We had our first appointment earlier today and they did an ultrasound!! Our little 6cm baby has a head, a body, two arms and two legs. All parts necessary to continue growing perfectly! It also has a loud and strong heartbeat at 166bpm. You can see it pictured below!

To celebrate seeing our active and wiggly little baby, we decided to get it a gift for being so cooperative. Since we don't know boy or girl yet, this is what we ended up with!! (It's even orange!)

Small World!

2011-03-14T13:16:00.000-06:00

Everything in our apartment is beginning to shrink! Just look what happened to our newspaper and toilet paper!:

Best Jeopardy Ever!

2011-02-17T15:32:00.005-07:00

We thought this was the coolest thing ever... the fact that a computer can come up with the right answers most of the time... it was funny to watch too! Way cool... if you want to watch them click "Keep reading" below to see them!

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Kristen's Explorer Poem

2011-01-30T19:33:00.007-07:00

A very long time ago Kristen wrote a song for her students learning about Explorers. We always wanted to upload the poem but never could figure it out. I just found a way for us to be able to do it! You'll probably have to turn up the volume a little bit because she was so far away from the microphone when we recorded it. Click here to listen to it! It was all made possible by DropBox which is really cool and you all should sign up for it!

Our Schedules for mom

2011-01-20T13:57:00.002-07:00

Alex:

Kristen:

Don't count on these always being our schedules because we sometimes have a class that gets canceled but it's a pretty good estimate. Sorry about the formatting issues I had with the lines disappearing in many places... I thought they were all fixed but they weren't.

We're slow, but here's a new post!!!

2011-01-17T12:45:00.007-07:00

This was from a long time ago, but my class/school was having a crazy hair day. I think I was the only adult in the building who participated!!

We are really bad with our camera. New Year's Resolution=take more pictures!! We spent 2 weeks at both families houses over Christmas break and the only pictures we took were of Mom and Dad (Thornbrue) opening their Christmas presents from us.

What could it be?

Building suspense.......

New sleeping bags!!!!!!!!! These ones might actually keep mom warm when we are camping. And dad's old sleeping bag is probably 50 years old. They are both really excited to go camping now. But I think we'll wait until it's at least a little bit warmer!

We had a GREAT Christmas! Mom and Dad Thornbrue gave us a really nice keyboard. We had to rearrange quite a few things in our house to make it fit, but we LOVE it. I have actually been able to play a piano and practice. It is wonderful!! (Forgive the music, gloves, and homework on the floor and my craft supplies on the couch. Our house usually has a million projects going at the same time). Oh yeah, we also added the bench, headphones, and sustaining pedal to make playing the keyboard easier and more quiet!!!

I went to a Relief Society craft night and learned how to crochet these cute flowers. They can be 2 layers or 3 layers and have a different color inside circle, etc. I made the black/blue one there, came home and made 2 more. The next day I experimented with making 3 layered ones, and then I made the black/white one to wear on Sunday. I just hot-glued a piece of felt onto the back and then added the clip. I think they are kind of fun!!

Well, that's it for our life lately. School started again and even though I have finished the elementary education program, I am still taking more classes. I figured that as long as I have financial aid and get paid to go to school, I might as well take advantage of it. I also wanted to try and get some fun classes, since it has been so long since taking anything fun. First of all I am taking an Educational Linguistics class (that helps with teaching ESL students), then Intro to Landscape Architecture because it sounded interesting, Balancing Work and Family, Kickboxing, Billiards, and Band. It is going to be an interesting semester, but hopefully fun and worth it. Alex has Calc II, Physics, Ecology of our Changing World, and Billiards (with me). It is fun to have a class together again. Dad, you better watch out when we play pool with you next time. We're learning tons of new tricks and rules.

You know you've been in the library too long when...

2010-12-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

You start thinking of reasons you've been there too long.
You start playing with the drinking fountain water on a "break" from studying.
You've watched employees at the desk change at least five times.
You can laugh at the dumbest things.
You start drifting into La La Land.
Everything starts blurring together and you could swear you're doing the same exact thing as an hour ago.
You start exploring places in the library like the elevator or the BARN.
You never want to study in the same study room ever again in your life.
You start sending calls from Santa to everyone in your contact list but of course you use another friends number as the caller as to not give away your identity of the silly call! www.sendacallfromsanta.com
You realize that your time could have been better used sleeping or eating because your brain has imploded or exploded... you choose.
You start smelling things like the eraser.
You wish you had a room full of Silly Putty.
5/8 + 3/16 could easily = 7/25.
You learn just about everything but what you tried to study.
It's way past dinner time and you want real food.
You start looking at facebook and other sites just hoping that reality will never come back.
...

We did something besides study and work!

2010-11-21T08:57:00.001-07:00

We went to a Physics Demonstration night (Friday)! It was really pretty neat. We watched the guy turn a pickle into a lightbulb.... we liked that experiment a lot. We didn't get very many pictures because they were going from thing to thing so fast that it was nearly impossible to take the few I did take. Anyways here is the guy blowing packing peanuts out of a cup by giving them a charge:

Then he put a mop on the thing. That was pretty neat because he could make the strings not stick up by poking his finger at it:

Some cool things with magnets, wires, and capacitors:

He used his electromagnet to fling an aluminum ring at the ceiling. Of course to get it to go that high he had to freeze the ring in liquid nitrogen. He also made magnets hover by freezing them. It was so cool.

This was the biggest thing of their show... they had some pretty monstrous 2500v charges coming off of that thing:

So yeah we thought it was fun to do something for once. I don't recommend turning a pickle into a lightbulb by the way because it smells pretty bad.

My New Hobby!!

2010-10-13T21:12:00.003-06:00

My hobby started out with my new favorite store named "Hobby Lobby"!! Very fitting, I know. Anyways, I decided that I LOVE making cute felt and fleece baby booties. And no, I am not pregnant, I just like baby things. This was my first attempt, and I think they turned out pretty dang cute, if I do say so myself. Also, another plus side, this pair of shoes pictured here cost me about 15 cents and about 2 1/2 hours of my life!!!
Prepare to be seeing a whole lot more of them, because I just cut out 5 more to make tonight. :)

Credit Card Offers

2010-10-10T22:44:00.000-06:00

So we've (most addressed to me) been getting so many credit card offers lately that I decided to keep all of them for a month... but then it turned into only keeping them a week... because there are way too many. If I waited a month I would have a stash so large it wouldn't fit anywhere in my apt! So yeah... there it is 14 of them in one solitary week! That is crazy! I think it's really funny how bad Chase wants us. Sometimes we get 2 from them in one day. As you can see most of those offers in the picture are from chase. Yeah... I know you can opt out of receiving the pre-screen selections by calling 1-888-567-8688 but I'd rather not. Someday we just might join Chase because they do have some cool offers, but just not today.

Plant

2010-10-05T17:12:00.004-06:00

After giving my plant a hair cut and filling the entire garbage can...this is what it looks like now!

Our Schedules This Semester

2010-09-22T10:31:00.001-06:00

Kristen has an easy to remember schedule. She is student teaching every M-F from 8:30 to 4:30 and has a music for elementary teachers class on Thursdays from 7-9pm.

My schedule is:

Yeah... ECE is so easy that it is boring and I could pass without even going to class. Calc II probably just killed me with the test I just took today and Physics will probably do that with this Fridays test.

School Has Started

2010-09-02T16:56:00.000-06:00

Well we're both going crazy with school already. Kristen is doing student teaching at Millville Elementary (5th grade) and has one class on Thursday nights. I have 2 "easy" classes and 2 "insanely difficult" (Calc 2 & Physics) classes. Someday I'll get the schedule posted but not today.

Yay... my birthday is coming soon (Sunday)! I guess we aren't having any party because there wouldn't be too many people coming. I'm still excited about it... and dreaming as my wishlist grows.

I just wanted to make a post since it has been a while so yeah... we are still alive!

Our Oregon Vacation

2010-07-28T18:08:00.002-06:00

We got lucky enough to be able to take a sort of last minute vacation to Oregon and had tons of fun for a few days. The first day we went to Multnomah Falls:

Then later that day we went to Blue Lake Park:

We didn't get many pictures there but thought this tree in particular was super interesting. We had fun in some pedal boats but have no picture proof of that.

Then we went to the beach/coast and camped there:

We also visited the Rose Gardens:

On the last day we went to Clear Lake... wow very beautiful... the water was so clear you can see the bottom and everything in it! It is also very freezing cold:

Workplaces

2010-07-11T16:12:00.003-06:00

Here is Joan's place... the lady who was the first to hire me to do yard work and has the 1.75 acres which I have already told you about. By the way the pictures don't even do justice. I would have needed at least 16 more to show you the whole yard but here's some for an idea. She constantly has a mountain of mulch in her driveway for us to use while working in her yard.

Here is Louise's place who was next to hire me.

Louise then passed me on to her son-in-law's parents:

Oh yeah... and Louise said she hasn't used her barbecue for at least two years and didn't even know if it still worked so she gave it to me! (It works perfectly by the way and will probably need more propane really soon.) It even has a really nice cover.

Kristen wanted to add something about our Logan Zoo visit:

So, Alex and I went to the Willow Park Zoo on Friday and it's more like a glorified aviary. But there are a few big animals (Elk, monkey, bob cat, wallaby, etc.) Anyways, there were a TON of birds of all sorts and I particularly loved the baby ones that were sticking out of the bird house and the other fuzzy ones that were walking around by their mom with their cute little stubby wings. Very cute!! We had a lot of fun!!

Work and Summer Stuff

2010-06-16T16:55:00.002-06:00

The weekend after Memorial Day Weekend we went camping in Sublet Idaho. It was quite fun and interesting other than the rain. We went fishing and had a good time overall. I could say more but it has been a few weeks ago now.

We were supposed to have an outdoor BBQ and yard games night in our ward last Friday but it was so cold and rainy that we had to cancel it. We have rescheduled it for tomorrow and hopefully it should not rain. We do have a back-up plan this time at least if it does be nasty weather on us but the whole point is to have fun outdoors. I even stayed up till 2:30am the night before when this activity was supposed to take place so I could build a ladder golf game set thing. I got it done in time but nobody got to play it... hopefully tomorrow!

Kristen had a wonderful birthday party last Saturday... she got lots of fun things that she wanted but has been so busy with school that she hasn't been able to enjoy a single one of them yet. Thanks to everyone who came and made it possible!

Some of you know that I have been working for a lady named Joan doing yard work ever since school got out. That job is almost complete now except the weeding here and there once a week. We (myself and others I worked with) started out weeding all flowerbeds and mounds and the garden. Then we edged around all the trees and mounds... taking out all of the grass. That took quite a few days. Then we started planting and doing just about everything you can do with a yard. I've decided that trees and Joan are like many women and shoes. See a good deal... gotta have it. Looks cool... gotta have it. Adds variety... gotta have it. Have room for more... gotta have it. Yeah so you get the picture. We planted truckload after truckload of plants, shrubs, trees, etc. We took 5 or 6 truckloads of weeds to the landfill. We went through 6 yards of mulch. The house sits on 1.75 acres. Now I just need to take a picture of the place so you all can see what we did, but you'll have to live with the google image that I found for now.

All of the brown is where we weeded and planted millions of flowers, lilies, shrubs, trees, and other plants. The green dots are all of the trees... no we didn't plant them all as you can see there are shadows of the pre-existing ones, but yes we did plant lots of them. All of the trees have a 4ft diameter mulch circle around them. This image is at least 4 years old though and doesn't really help you see the bigger picture because they have nice green grass and a paved driveway now. Oh yeah, one day when we were waiting for her to write out our paychecks we counted 70+ trees in just the one front corner of her yard alone.

The last little while I have been working for Louise too. She has a big house but not so big of a yard. She has me do things from shopping to repairs, etc. You could say I'm her maid/handyman. I do things that she can't do because of her bad knee. It's fun and I like it and she even gave me a huge raise after only one day of work. I think that one of the biggest reasons she gave me the raise besides "you do excellent work" is because I got her a discount on her landscape bark. Anyways she is fun to work for.

That's about the latest of our summers... school for Kristen and work for me. We both thing the weather in Logan has been un-summer-like because there have only been two nice warm hot sunny days and the rest have been full cold air, dark clouds, and rain. Maybe someday we will have a true summer?

Small Quick Post/Invite

2010-06-09T12:09:00.000-06:00

There's plenty to write about and pictures to post but I'm so busy right now I'll just quickly write this little bit:

On Sat (12th) at 3 pm we're having a birthday party for Kristen (it is her 21st birthday) and you're all invited... here in Logan at our apt. If you need more details please call us!

Summer Activities

2010-05-18T08:54:00.001-06:00

We should probably post more... but that would mean we would have to do more fun things than we do right now. We can face it that we are pretty boring people. Kristen has started her summer classes and last week she had a really intense, almost all day one. She's always doing homework or classes or something and I'm just looking for jobs and trying to make money in any way possible. I'm going to build a really nice queen-sized bed out of pine but don't think it's going to be ugly when I say pine because it's going to be amazing. Can we start the bidding please?! Just kidding, but if you are interested tell me so... I can build more than one and we can talk customizing options. It will be similar to the one that we have posted pictures of here on the blog that I made in shop.

We worked for Grandma and Grandpa in Idaho on Saturday and it wore us out pretty well. There were a bunch of breaks in their sprinkler lines and lots of roots to cut out and trees to remove. That was intense... all day long.

Today I was hired as a temporary helper to help a family in Salt Lake move across town. Kinda interesting. Hopefully it works out and goes well. I would like a longer temporary job but anything is better than nothing.

Oops. I didn't realize that Kristen already wrote a post last night or I wouldn't have written this one... you better read hers too or she will not be happy!

New Post!

2010-05-17T22:36:00.001-06:00

I guess I put off writing a new post because no one except mom ever comment on our last one. I thought all of our new furniture was really cool!! If everyone saw our apartment they would be very impressed with how much we can stuff into this little place! It's pretty incredible.
Anyways, Spring semester is over. Alex didn't fail anything and I got a 4.0 again! I am now taking 17 credits this summer so that I can do student teaching in the fall and graduate in December. So far I am feeling pretty overwhelmed with how crazy everything is with all my classes. I will hopefully be done with one of my classes by the end of this week, but we'll see how much time I want to spend writing lesson plans and textbook reflection cards. Oh joy!!
I actually need to write a lesson plan right now, so ta ta, good night, talk to you later!!!

Our new furniture!

2010-04-25T21:31:00.002-06:00

I am writing this blog from my phone. It is pretty fancy. Alex says I can only post one picture at a time. So I might have to make 4 posts. I'm just trying it out for fun. We'll have to see about doing multiple pictures. Now that I know how to blog from my phone, I might blog more often. Mom would like that! Anyways, here are some pictures of our new apartment layout. Dad brought us a huge truck load of my bedroom furniture and remaining things from my room. I did such a good job organizing...we ended up with extra room. Still not enough to add anything else, but the vacuum fits under the bed again. Hooray! Ooh, it looks like we figured out how to add more pictures. Enjoy!

Oh, so apparently my phone can't do everything cool...I am still editing this blog on the computer, but it can do multiple pictures, it just can't put a caption under them. It'll only do one block of text. The last picture of my bookshelf is pretty exciting because my practicum teacher gave me all the books on the top shelf! Hooray!! I like new books. Specially free ones! FUN!

New Phones!

2010-04-22T08:34:00.003-06:00

We got some really cool phones on Tuesday which Kristen is really excited about. We both got the Samsung Intensity. Kristen is enchanted that it is orange. I think it's really cool that it has tons of features including the fact that my phone made this blog post out of a text and it is very easy to use. It has a slide out keyboard. Transferring our contacts over was very easy... Anyways it is a nice phone and has all the features of our old RAZRs plus other cool things. Way cool phone--love it!

Cool Potato

2010-04-17T22:56:00.000-06:00

This is a pretty crazy potato if you ask me... one potato decided to grow into the other!

Funny Pictures

2010-03-07T16:28:00.000-07:00

This sign was pretty funny we thought... although it was at the temple so that makes it not as funny but still funny enough!

When I came back from a class a few days ago I noticed that the snow had rolled itself up on someone's windshield. You can't quite see how cool it really was by seeing this picture but it was really neatly rolled to a tiny center!

Journal Writing

2010-02-20T10:11:00.002-07:00

For all of you who say: "I want to keep a journal" but just can't keep up on it: I have some things that will help! Read The Dominguez and Escalante Journal. After reading that think about the things that they write about and how what they wrote changed history... the boring mundanes of life, yet that's what makes history. "Day to day history is boring," (David R. Lewis). What we write about doesn't have to be the significant things in life but things as simple as my great, great grandpa, Peter Matson, wrote in his journal: 1885 March Wed 25: "We arrived safely in Salt Lake City and nothing unpleasant happened, with the exception of Brother Jensen's lunch sack which he had set on the ground at the station without giving thought that the brewer had pigs." Or this: 1885 June Sun 21: "We had a meeting in the city." It's interesting how he talks about things casually and by what he writes we can know what kind of a person he was. He was a mission president in Denmark at the time when polygamy was taught widely by the church.

Another book that will get you in the journalistic mood is A Mormon Mother by Annie Clark Tanner. Reading this book after D&E Journal made me really see the importance of a journal. She writes the book for her posterity, yet a good historian can see beyond what she writes... the things she doesn't write about. It is a really great book.

Why do I say all of this? I'm in Utah History (HIST 3850) and loving the class... lots of reading etc but awesome class! Truthfully I think The Dominguez and Escalante Journal and A Mormon Mother will get you in the journal writing mood like they did for me. All most people want after their life here on earth is to be remembered and a journal is a good way to do that!

We are alive...barely!

2010-02-03T21:29:00.003-07:00

Well, since the new semester started on January 11th, Alex and I have both been rather busy. I am doing Level III of Elementary Education, so my schedule includes Teaching Reading, Teaching Language Arts, Teaching Math, Teaching Social Studies, Teaching Science and Classroom Management. I have 9 weeks of classes (5 1/2 left) and then 5 weeks in the elementary school teaching some of the lessons that I prepare. I will be taking a few classes during the summer and hopefully I'll be ready to do my student teaching in the fall and graduate soon thereafter. If anyone has any words of wisdom for me so that I won't be so nervous to go into the classroom, please feel free to humor me!
Alex is currently taking Calculus, Digital Circuits, Computer Science and Utah History. He is pretty much swamped with homework all the time....and it's the hard stuff that's difficult to figure out. I get a lot of homework, too, but it's relatively simple, repetitive, redundant, boring, etc! I basically live at the education building in one classroom. I move once to go to my classroom management class on Wednesday afternoons. It's great fun!! It's kind of entertaining because I have all of my teaching methods classes with the same people.....so it is the same 27 of us for all 16 hours. I've made quite a few friends, but only soon enough to leave them again in a few weeks. The semester has seemed FOREVER long already, but in reality it hasn't even been a month, yet. Because all of my classes only meet once a week (for 3+ hours) they have to cram in as much as possible and give us a million projects and presentations. Hooray!

Well, over Christmas Break, Alex and I spent some time in Moroni, South Jordan, and St. George. While in Moroni we ripped out the old countertop range stove (EW!),

the cupboards underneath and the cupboards up above in order to put in a new range/double oven with overhead microwave.

Alex's mom decided she didn't need three ovens, so we later ripped out the oven and turned that space into cupboard space. To be able to get all the wiring worked out, Alex had to climb through the wall,

with Stony was on the other side threading wire across the attic....

it eventually got all worked out (Alex's brother is an electrician) and working.

His mom LOVED the new appliances!

We then went down to St. George and stayed with Aunt Rita and Uncle Dick for a few days.

Mostly we wandered around their neighborhood, talked with them, learned how to make homemade noodles and ebbil skivers (sp?) (yummy), took a guided tour of St. George (visiting Tuacahn),

fed the ducks,

went to the temple,

watched a movie in their theater, and helped Uncle Dick figure out his new phone. We decided that if Verizon had iPhones, we'd get one. They are pretty sweet....specially because you can put the scriptures on them. We learned a ton about Aunt Rita's history and of Grandpa Dick and other relatives. We also learned that Uncle Dick is a practical jokester. He was out in his truck fiddling with the blue-tooth on his phone. The phone rang inside and Aunt Rita picked it up. "Is this Rita Geisler?" the voice on the phone said (because everyone can hear both sides of the conversation since Aunt Rita has it set loud in order to hear it). "Yes," she replied. "Is your husband around," the voice said. "He sure is. I'll go find him," she said. She then took the phone and went to find Uncle Dick. Moments later she came in chuckling. "It was him!!!" Uncle Dick had called her asking for himself. Funny!
Anyways, we went back up to Moroni because Alex's nephew was getting married. We went to that and spent most of our vacation playing games, lounging around, working on some Christmas presents, and then enjoying a great Christmas day! Alex got me some fake nails from WalMart because I've always wanted to try them.

The first two days were really awkward because I wasn't used to them, but after that, I thought they were really awesome and my fingers felt naked when I took them off. Alex told his mom that I always get a toothbrush and toothpaste in my stocking so what did santa remember to leave for me......Yup! I got my traditional toothbrush and toothpaste. Alex was kind of disappointed that santa forgot him. We bought ourselves a Dremel tool for Christmas and we enjoyed using it to make other presents. It has a glass etching tool, so we etched pictures and names into candle holders for out family members.
The day after Christmas we came up to South Jordan and got Christmas again. Mom got me a pressure canner!!!!!!!!!!! and I am so excited to learn how to use it this weekend (if I get my homework done). We spent most of that week over at Annie and Michael's new house helping them paint, pack, move, clean, watch the kids, play on their Wii Fit (which is on our wish list), and play a few games with the fam. Then we made it back to Logan with a few days before the semester started. We got our money back from the guy that basically broke our car......we had the water pump and timing belt replaced and they destroyed the damper pully. By the time we got to Moroni our belt that goes to the alternator was shredded. Yikes! Luckily there is a guy in Moroni that could fix it and he charged us $100, but made the bill out for $119 so that the guy up here in Logan could pay us back and "let us have a little extra for all the trouble." I turned in my application for student teaching, and then we got ready to start the semester.
Now we are 4 weeks into the semester and already dreaming of when it will be over. I better finish my math homework so I can go to bed. Love you all!
Kristen
Oh, P.S. Annie is teaching me how to makes bows! Here is a fuzzy picture of my first two attempts. The blue and red one, the first one I ever made, I am giving to my old roommate, Amy, because she is having a baby in 2 weeks. The pink one I made second and it's pretty cute.

Yucky Air

2010-01-14T14:16:00.001-07:00

Just look at the terrible air in Logan. We supposedly are 1st in the nation for bad air quality. It looks bad and smells bad. Today hasn't been as bad because we had a skiff of snow overnight last night. It's kinda hard to see all of the nasty smog in this picture but it is there! You can hardly see more than a block clearly. It's red air day every day. If you need an instant headache, come to Logan and sniff the "fresh" air. Oh yeah and notice the parking ticket on that car... little extra but not on purpose... don't park illegally in Logan or you will get a ticket. They are parked in front of the stop sign.

I know it's been forever since we have posted and we do have many pictures and things to post about our winter vacation... but there's a lot to say about that. Someday maybe in the eternities we will get to posting about that.

I should mention... be aware that almost everything is a scam these days and they can get away with it. Just last night I called in for a job as a "mystery shopper" and I've heard they really do work etc. The thing is, they are very sly with their words. They add in extra fees after you say "yes, I'm interested" etc. You may never agree to the extra fees but then they throw them at you... I could go into more detail but I won't... just watch out all around you. At least we were only scammed out of $5 and not more. Even the most trusted can be a scam as family members have found out with banks and government.

Recently I've found that a lot of people have a hard time spelling Kristen's name right but also that people try to make our last name Christiansen most of the time. Spell Check even says that Christiansen is miss-spelled but Christensen is not. How many Christiansen's are there in Utah compared to Christensen? Anyways... pet-peeve of mine. Maybe I need to work on my p-r-o-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-i-o-n or people need to learn something in school. At least I can be thankful that my relatives and friends (just not businesses or schools) know how to spell names correctly!

Lights Outside

2009-12-10T08:53:00.000-07:00

Here's our apartment with the lights outside... it's taken with my phone so it's not so high quality but you can see it now at least.

'Tis the Season.....

2009-12-05T14:52:00.004-07:00

...To decorate our apartment!!!!!!
Alex put up Christmas lights outside our apartment and they come on when it starts to get dark. (Set up to the apartment lighting system so we don't have to pay for electricity either).

This year we have 3 trees. The little fake one mom got for me a long time ago to go with my American Girl dolls. The biggest one Annie got for me as a "going off to college Christmas present" so I could decorate my college dorm. Most of the ornaments are broken due to an exciting game of "throw them on the ground and see what happens," played by Jarom and Cade last year, but there is still enough to make it look cute and festive. Alex did an amazing job redoing the lights and helping me get the tree back together.

And the small real tree one I got for free. When we went to go look at Annie's gingerbread house display, they had a table talking about making a greener earth....take a tree and plant it....etc. So, I took one!! And I love it. It has 3 ornaments on it and is the smallest member of our tree family. I also love the teacup planter that mom let me stick it in. Darling.

A while ago we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma let us choose which stockings we wanted that she had just finished making. They are so cute. We just barely stuck our bulletin board up so that we could hang them on it. I think it's fantastic. "The stockings were hung on the bulletin board with care."

Someday I'll get a picture of the outside of our apartment when the lights are on. It's pretty fun. And everyone else is jealous that we are so festive!! :)
Well, the rest of our day is going to be filled to the top with studying. Wish us luck....finals are coming too fast!

Thanksgiving!

2009-12-02T21:22:00.002-07:00

Last week was spent with the most amazing family in the world.....MINE!!! I have so much to be thankful for. Family is the biggest blessing I could ever have, and thanks to the gospel and temple work, I can be with my family forever!!
I am thankful for everyone to be able to talk to, share silly sister times with, play games with, have help with homework, share words of encouragement, give advice, and show genuine love. Alex and I get pretty lonely in Logan sometimes and we appreciate always knowing that we have family out there somewhere loving us. I am grateful for parents who raised me in the gospel and who watch out for me on a daily basis.
As the last week of school comes to a close, I am grateful for everything I have learned this semester. I have probably complained a lot, because a lot of it became repetitive, but I really have enjoyed the classes I had and the friends I made in each of them. 20 credits was a big load to take on, but I pulled it off pretty well....I hope (check in sometime next week to see if all my hard work really paid off. I should be getting my final grades by the end of next week).
I am grateful for a good ward and lots of friendly neighbors who say hi to us and who put up with our crazy lives and personalities. I am grateful for people who will come over and have dinners with us on Sundays and play games with us. It really is something that I look forward to each week. We like associating with other people in our stage of life, and it is a fun way to get to know people.
I am also deeply and extremely grateful for a husband who loves me!! I'm sure I drive him crazy sometimes, but he loves me anyways!! He is my best friend and I love knowing that we will always have each other. Life can be hard, but having Alex next to me makes it all worth it. And for the most part life is fun. We wish school could be done faster, but one day at a time seems fast enough sometimes!
I am grateful for a reliable car to drive, a warm place to sleep on these Logan winter nights, food to eat, the internet, cell phones, shoes, hot water, a hair brush, knowledgeable doctors, a toothbrush, and life in general. I truly am blessed!
Thanksgiving is a great time to reflect on what I am really grateful for and focus on what I take for granted so often. I should make everyday a Thanksgiving day (only minus the food because that's too much work). Now as Christmas draws near, I like to continue the Thanksgiving spirit and think about Christ and how much I have to be thankful for because of Him. I am glad to know that I am a daughter of God and that I have Him on my side rooting for me!
Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!
Thanks for being my wonderful family and friends!!!! We appreciate and love all of you!!!
Kristen

Rants and Raves

2009-11-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of stressful things this week... at least now my tests are over. Kristen has some presentation still for Friday but yeah. I feel a lot better to be done with my evil calculus tests. I still need to register though and a lot of the classes I need aren't being offered right now. That seems to happen to me a lot.

I should be working a lot more than I am currently working. Aunt Cena has been good to let us help her but it's not equivalent to working more. I've heard of wyzant.com where you can tutor other people on subjects like Spanish etc... but I really question how much is really made from that and if people actually even use it. I had the idea of making desk name things (like the one that used to be the banner on our website) with my scroll saw and wood... but the whole selling it might be hard. Does anyone have any ideas? Scheduled jobs don't really work well for me in case I have a huge test to study for etc. I could probably get a work-study job with the school and that might work well.

I heard some pretty good twists to the "in the bathroom European" joke: If you're American outside of the bathroom, what are you inside the bathroom? (European) What are you if you don't wash your hands? (You're a German) And when you are all done? (You're a Finnish).

I wrote a new poem recently and put it on the poetry page (link on left) but for some reason Blogger doesn't recognize that the page is updated so it thinks it's still old etc and not updated... but it is.

Look how cute we are!!

2009-11-10T20:48:00.005-07:00

Alex and I decided that we didn't take enough pictures of ourselves, and we don't document our lives very well. We see a bunch of people in our ward, or on facebook with amazing pictures of hikes and dates and fun times. We decided that we were just plain boring and not fun at all. Therefore, we specifically took a trip to the mountains to prove that we have a life and we do have fun! Thus you see our documented date up Logan Canyon. I think our pictures are awesome, too!! Incredible what a tripod and a timer can do.

This last one is my favorite!! I really like the angle and the pose, and the cute and handsome husband that I have!!! How did I ever get so lucky?

Halloween

2009-11-01T20:16:00.006-07:00

Well here are the pictures that we have promised. We have sad stories to go with them all.

So these were our costumes for Halloween that I made. We were Lego's. Thanks to James and Allie for the idea... since they did it some years ago. It took many hours (somewhere around 12) to make them and was not easy. We think they were the coolest ever but apparently people at our ward party didn't because we didn't even rank in the top 5 of the best costumes. Anyways they can connect together forwards and backwards.

This was our 32 pound pumpkin that took quite a few hours to carve. It was so difficult to carve that we were tired of it after one hour but it took around 2 to complete.

This picture was taken at 5:25pm.

This picture was taken at 5:30pm... a few minutes after the incident. Almost self explanatory. I took the pictures of the apartment and watered the plants... while I was getting water for the last plant we heard a huge crash and looked to see that the whole stand the TV was on had collapsed. The saddest part wasn't that the stand broke but that it snapped the plant into two pieces. We stuck the other broken part in some water so it can grow some roots and become another beautiful plant... it was very sad though. I started to clean it all up and said wait we need to document this before we get too far. We put the nice 8x10 rug that we got into the bedroom... but didn't take a picture of that... sorry. So below is actually what our apartment looks like since we did a rearrangement of furniture:

It feels a lot more spacious and is really neat! We like how open it feels and looks. Now we just need the cool lamp that Kristen has in South Jordan to go between the two smaller flowery couches.

We're still alive!!

2009-10-24T10:26:00.005-06:00

It's been a long time since we posted anything, but we're still here!!! We're just plugging away with homework, school, homework and more school! I got some good news yesterday....I passed the Praxis test (elementary content knowledge. Has to be passed before I can do student teaching). Yay!!! Now I can do Level 3 in the spring and student teaching in the Fall. Then perhaps I'll be able to graduate next December.
Other news, we went to Alex's friends wedding yesterday! Now we have more married friends in Logan. Hooray! Sometimes it's hard to play with single people. Dating is fine and married is better! It just makes it easier.
We were at church the other day and there was an older couple visiting their daughter, the guy basically had a heart attack. Apparently he had had a spider bite and was taking some kind of medicine to heal it....the medicine caused him to have a heart attack and we had to call 911 and stop the meeting for a while. It was pretty intense. It's scary when things like that happen. It makes me grateful that I'm not a doctor because I couldn't deal with situations like that on a daily basis. So sad.
Anyways, Alex is doing well, too! Stressed by all his math classes, but what do you do about it?
Oh, yeah, here is my schedule this semester!!

I don't know why the picture is fuzzy, but you get the idea. I'm pretty busy, but it's entertaining anyways!! Well, I better get cleaning the house. Grandma is bringing us some rugs and a new couch from one of Aunt Rita's storage units!! How exciting. It's like Christmas.
Love you all!

Financial stuff everyone should know but maybe doesn't

2009-10-08T14:49:00.006-06:00

I am really loving my Family Finance class that I am taking and I am learning a lot from it. We just read a book called "The Automatic Millionaire" by David Bach. It's a pretty good book... but anyways a few of the useful things I've learned:

You can get a free credit report every 4 months. The government has made a law that Experian, Equifax, and Transunion give at least one free credit report per person per year. The trick is to get one of these three every 4 months every year (that would be every Oct-Experian, Feb-Equifax, and June-transunion if you start now). Get one for every person in the house... you, spouse, and even children. Children should not have one but you should always check because identity theft could really hurt them, especially if not discovered for many years. If there is ever anything on there that you did not do, report it... they have instructions on how to get it disputed and removed. To get your free report go to www.annualcreditreport.com.

The credit report is not the same as your credit score... that you must pay for if you want it (it comes from a company called FICO). You can "estimate" your FICO score for free at www.bankrate.com/calculators/credit-score-fico-calculator.aspx.

If you don't have money for something, don't buy it. However, there is a cool credit card repayment calculator at www.ftc.gov/creditcardcalculator.

If your savings account is making less than 1.0%APY you may want to consider finding a new savings account with someone else! Ally has one of the nations best rates right now at 1.80%APY compounded daily. Anyways what I am saying is shop around for your banking needs using one of these excellent sites: www.mybanktracker.com; www.bankrate.com; or www.mymoneyblog.com.

If you are interested in seeing the US debt on many levels go to: www.usdebtclock.org

I know that's a lot of website stuff... at least you should get the free credit report if nothing else! Also... I have posted some of these links on our "Links" list to the left (which by the way will now open the links in a new tab so you don't have to use the back button).

Humor of Dave Barry

2009-09-30T20:22:00.003-06:00

I was recently at my Stake Priesthood Meeting and they read this story. I thought it was funny and that you all needed to hear it!

The following story is written by Dave Barry and is titled "Clean Laugh 707":

Let's say a guy named Fred is attracted to a woman named Martha. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Martha, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then, there is silence in the car.

To Martha, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Fred is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Martha is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily towards, I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Fred is thinking: ...so that means it was...let's see...February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means...lemme check the odometer...Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Martha is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed - even before I sensed it - that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.

And Fred is thinking: And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Martha is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.

And Fred is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty...scumballs.

And Martha is thinking: Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Fred is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up their...

"Fred," Martha says aloud.

"What?" says Fred, startled.

"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have...oh dear, I feel so..."(She breaks down, sobbing.)

"What?" says Fred.

"I'm such a fool," Martha sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."

"There's no horse?" says Fred.

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Martha says.

"No!" says Fred, glad to finally know the correct answer.

"It's just that...it's that I...I need some time," Martha says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Fred, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)

"Yes," he says. (Martha, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

"Oh, Fred, do you really feel that way?" she says.

"What way?" says Fred.

"That way about time," says Martha.

"Oh," says Fred. "Yes." (Martha turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

"Thank you, Fred," she says.

"Thank you," says Fred.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Fred gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a college basketball game between two South Dakota junior colleges that he has never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't think about it.

The next day Martha will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification.

They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it either.

Meanwhile, Fred, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Martha's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: "Norm, did Martha ever own a horse?"

And that's the difference between men and women.
~Dave Barry

Today was exciting!!

2009-09-26T21:36:00.002-06:00

Today, well, more like early this morning, Alex and I became True Aggies!!! Last night was the homecoming dance, and at Midnight people line up so they can get their chance to stand on the "A" and kiss. At Snow College it works out so you stand under the bell tower and kiss while it is dinging 12 dongs at midnight. Everyone is done in less than a minute. Here, there are about a million people who want to kiss on a little 3'x3' platform. The lines were super long and I think we ended up becoming True Aggies at about 12:45 this morning. Pretty entertaining. Specially with the people standing next to us in line. He kept making funny comments, so it made it worth it!

After getting some sleep, Alex and I went up to Aunt Cena's to help her with her yard. Mostly we pulled a million and a half weeds. I am SORE already. My right arm and my poor fingers from gripping and pulling so much. Her yard looks SO much better, though, and she was really happy with it, too. (And she paid us for it, so it was nice to add something to our income line on the tracking paper Alex is doing for Family Finance). Anyways, when we got back from her house we had another surprise.

Some of you knew before, but I didn't post it.....I had decided back in June that I needed something to nurture and take care of. Alex won't let me get anything furry and cuddly (and it's too expensive to pay the pet deposit every month), so I decided to try gold fish. Not quite as appealing as a kitten, but still fun to watch and it gave me something to take care of to keep the nurturing side of me sane. Well, gold fish didn't work out very well. They all kept dying. The worst was when one died the day after I bought it, so I took it back and he gave me a new one. As soon as I got the new one out of the bag it died. Good grief. So, after my 7th goldfish died I decided to pay 1 cent more and try guppies. This was the middle of July sometime. They aren't as pretty, but I thought maybe they'd last longer. This was a Thursday and I bought 2 grown guppies for 30 cents. On Saturday there were 5 more. There were little baby guppies swimming around. Best 30 cents I've spent in a long time. Well, since then, one of the adults has died, and one of the babies died the other day. (I really didn't expect any of them to live). We separated the adults from the babies just to make sure none would get eaten, and we've enjoyed telling all our friends about how my 30 cents multiplied like crazy.

Anyways.......when we got home from Cena's house, we checked in on our guppies (who desparately needed new water) and to our surprise, there were 5 little guppies in with the remaining adult. It is so cool. We now have 5 babies, 4 teenagers, and 1 adult. It's pretty exciting. (Someone else can explain to me how one lone guppy can have 5 babies by itself......either they can fertilize themselves, or they are pregnant for a really long time......)!!

Yeah, then I went to the Relief Society Broadcast which was a really good way to end my Saturday. Now I think Alex and I are going to watch a movie and relax our aching bones.

My Schedule (Alex)

2009-09-23T10:44:00.003-06:00

I had to make it I guess since I have a job interview tomorrow... so here is my school schedule.

Sweet Internet!

2009-09-14T10:18:00.003-06:00

So we have a long story but I'll make it short. We have been sick of this "Truly Wireless" internet service that we were with that is provided by our apts. They were charging us $15/mo for a 512KB/sec connection... way too slow if you know what that means. We've always wanted to share a connection with our neighbors because they seem to never have any problems with it. The Truly Wireless was always having problems with it not connecting and resetting more than 50 times a day. It was really annoying to try and download something especially without the assistance of a downloader for a download. Our hometeacher is related to our neighbors somehow and they suggested that we share with our neighbors. We told them that's what we've wanted to do since we learned they got a good connection. Within minutes of our hometeachers leaving the neighbor came over and gave us the password and it will only be $10/mo and they get a whopping 8MB/sec connection! Yeah... we love it. It's great. Truly Wireless was trying to blame our problems with their internet on our computers... Ha ha yeah right! Anyways we love our neighbors and our connection is slightly faster than on campus!

Verizon Wireless is asking for a lawsuit

2009-08-31T17:38:00.006-06:00

I just called in to Verizon asking about a $125 security deposit that I paid on August 9, 2008. (The bank processed it Aug 11, 2008) Anyways I asked them why I haven't received it yet. The first lady I talked to was really nice and she told me some of the notes they had written about me on my account etc. She transferred me over to someone in the financial department and that lady was very rude and said that my security deposit was applied to paying the previous account owners balance. Hello... why am I paying the bill of someone else? I am going to call them up again when I am calmed down a little and don't have so much homework and make them send me a copy of the paper I signed saying that I was liable for their bill. I know they can't do it... because I know I didn't sign anything to that nature. The dumb people couldn't even tell me how much the previous person owed. I will get the money back!!!

9 Sep 2009
Update
I talked to a guy in a Verizon call center who was very nice and understanding today. He admitted that Verizon had surely been at error for what has happened. He totally understood that what happened wasn't right. He couldn't guarantee that I would get the money back exactly because it has to go through the Treasury dept. but yeah... he was on my side. If the treasury dept says no now, he will get the bank authorization number of the payment and try again. Hopefully they get it worked out right the first time and extra work isn't needed.

12 Sep 2009
Update
Okay so the guy from Verizon never called back within 48 hours so I decided to call Verizon again. This time I got some guy who was understanding but he had no idea how to help me so he forwarded me to someone in the Financial dept... so I got Laura. She was very kind to listen to me and try to understand what I was saying. It almost seemed like she had dealt with something similar before. She read the records well and she was fast... she saw exactly what happened... they applied my deposit as a payment in the previous account holders name. She talked to her supervisor and they said they would give my account the credit since it was their error. She said it could take him up to 48 hours to approve it but when it happens I should get a text and/or email. Hopefully it has worked this time. I'm glad I got someone smart.

15 Sep 2009
Update
Our account was finally credited for $125.00 today. That doesn't include the interest that I was promised but that's okay... we got it back!

So many posts we forgot to post

2009-08-28T16:34:00.003-06:00

First post we forgot to post... the check that Chris Call finally sent for refunding the deposit for Kristen's apartment that she paid way back in the days. He didn't give the whole $295.00 minus the six weeks of utilities but we figured it was good enough. Notice the oily spills on it.... He told us over and over that he had mailed it but I think he just lost it in a mess on his table.

Second... the front of our apartment after the managers decided to fix it up a little bit... I think it looks better now.

Third... we bought lots of healthy food one week and Kristen wanted to take a picture of it and post it. She did take the picture... now I'm posting it!

I gave Kristen the game "Mouse Trap" for her birthday because she really wanted it. I had to work that day and when I came home from work I saw Kristen asleep on the floor with one little mouse in her hand ready to play just as you can see in this picture.

The box fan that we used to have in our window was killed by the sewing machine. The fan was in the window one morning and it fell out knocking the sewing machine off of it's stand but as consequence of falling before it was skewered. It broke some of the plastic... bent some of the metal... and well burned up the motor. That's when we decided to get an air-conditioner.

We went camping last week before school started in Maple Canyon. We hiked around a lot and hiked up to the arch that is really cool as you can see!

This picture is just a nice picture of my beautiful wife!

Stress of school starting!

2009-08-14T15:42:00.004-06:00

Yay for me I finally got a score acceptable to be able to re-take Math 1050 and 1060! I took it some time ago with Kristen for the first time and she was going for a stats class and got 51 which was good enough to get her into the class she needed. I ended up having to take the dumb accuplacer test 6 times. (That's expensive at $10 each time.) I needed to get 60 to get into 1050/60. At first I got 43, then 50, then 57... dang only 3 points away... then I got 45 (ouch), then 59... one little point away. Hah so today I took it and got 77! It almost makes me want to do it again to place into the Calculus class I need. I would need 95 for that though. Anyways... woo. Finally I don't have to take that thing again. However if there is anyone who needs to take the CLM accuplacer test I know just about every problem and answer they will give you.

Kristen got her hair cut a few days ago and she looks really cute! She says it's too short but I'd say it's perfect and cute. This picture doesn't really help you see the length because she has it up in a pony-tail but yeah... I like it! (Above is before, below is after.)
We both are finished with our current work (me DI and Kristen Walmart) and will be moving on to greener pastures! Yay... Kristen is really excited about that.

Ok, Ok!!! It's a new post!!

2009-07-31T12:48:00.004-06:00

Well, Alex and I have been pretty busy. I'll give you a little update. We gave talks in church a few weeks ago. It was the anniversary of Joseph Smith's death, so we (as ward missionaries) talked about the life of Joseph Smith and his missionary work. I have only ever given 3 talks in church. 2 as the youth speaker that were 3-5 minutes long. This time was a step up. A 7 minute talk. Wow.
Next, I am officially accepted to the Elementary Education program. The only problem is that I went to register for my classes yesterday and half of them were full. I don't understand how it is a limited acceptance program, and it's all full? Hmm. Hopefully my advisor can help me at my appointment on Monday. We'll see. Other good news.....I took the Math Placement test and scored high enough to get into the class I need. Yay!!
More news. Um, I have my last day at WalMart on Thursday, August 13th! Then Alex and I are going to take a trip to see both our families. I tell ya, work is enough to ruin everything. It gets in the way SO much more often than it should. Good grief. Oh well!! Almost done. Then I'll probably be complaining about how school gets in the way, but at least I like school.
Oh yeah, we also bought a new computer. Both of our laptops are on the verge of death, so we got a desktop to replace them. So far it's been having a hard time getting the internet. We will probably need to get a better (higher quality) internet card. It's nice, though!!
Lisa and Matt stopped in for lunch today. It was fun to see them. Almost everyone has seen my [our--unless she wants it all to herself-- edit by Alex] cute little apartment now. It's small, but it's home!
Well, I have to do some homework for my online class now. I need to finish it fast!
Love you all!
Kristen

Just to save you money!:

2009-07-06T18:50:00.005-06:00

Hey everyone... before you go to the store to buy milk and cheese you should go to coupons.com and print off their save $0.75 on any brand of milk (that makes it $0.84 a gallon [here]) and save $1.00 on any brand of cheese from 2 lbs. and up. We think those coupons are fantastic and nobody should miss out!

(Oh yeah, with all the money you save, you can save up for a vacation and send us on it!-- hee hee.)

Holiday or not?

2009-07-01T09:28:00.003-06:00

Oh so a quick update about that citation... the dumb officer lied to us... you can't talk to anyone about it on the phone, you can only pay it. To talk to anyone you have to be at the Davis Cty. courthouse at 7ish in the morning. We decided it wasn't worth the gas and everything to try and appeal. I know it would have been appealed if we did go though.

Yeah so Saturday is my most favorite holiday and Kristen has to work from 5:30-10pm... I don't know exactly but I think that's right. It's really sad because parades are the more lame part of the 4th but the fireworks are part of what makes it the best. I guess I have not too much room to complain since Wal-Mart has given her every Sunday off because they hired her and she had that she was not available on Sundays.

Oh yeah... we haven't gotten any mail for a very long time... that could be good or bad. I haven't had an email in about 2 weeks either... hopefully in making this post people will comment and that sends me an email!

Updates

2009-06-22T20:18:00.003-06:00

We were at the Utah Arts Festival when it came through Logan.... There was an oriental man selling Bonsai trees. One lady was saying that she can't keep any flowers or plants alive and she went up to the man and asked, "How do you take care of them?" "Water," was his response. "No, how do you take care of them, like how do you keep them from dying?!" "Water!" We thought that was pretty funny.

Great, so we got pulled over today... dumb UHP. We were following the flow of traffic and there was a yellow car going particularly fast. I started to speed up to follow the yellow car. Right in that time the patrol man saw us and slowly got around and started following us after a while. In that time we could have and should have taken the nearest exit. Anyways we were going the speed limit after I saw him turn around. He followed us for the longest time and then decided to pull us over. He told us he did it for two reasons... that our registration was showing up expired and speeding. Our car was registered on the first of the month but it must have been that we registered it in Logan that they didn't get things entered in the system right because it was supposed to be done in South Jordan. Anyways the officer understood that but felt like giving us a ticket so he did cite us for speeding. Duh! We had just gotten into the lower 65 mph zone from the 75 mph and he cited us for 80! Anyways... I feel like it was stupid.

There was something else we wanted to write about but I forgot... oh yeah! We get to speak in church on Sunday. The topic is a little difficult but not so... on how Joseph Smith restored the church in a missionary standpoint view.

Fun and Stress!!!

2009-06-10T15:00:00.003-06:00

So, a while ago I decided that I wanted to take care of something!! We got fish!! Their names were Georgio, Edwardo, and Josepe. Georgio was murdered by the others, so he died first. Then the other two followed a few days later because of a reaction to something in the bowl. We bought 3 more, cleaned the bowl, and had 5 snails to help keep it clean. They were called Bonk, Flipper, and Spaz. Spaz died the next day, so I got a replacement named Ida. By the time I got her out of the bag, Flipper and Bonk were dead. Ida died an hour later. We now have a bowl of water on our table and the 5 snails are still in there. They all sleep at different times, so we don't know how many of them are still alive. They appear to be doing well, though.
I think I am done with goldfish for a little while....it makes me sad to find one (or two, or three) dead. Someday I'll convince Alex that something bigger than fish can be fun, too!!
The other day I said, "We should go on a date!!! We should go see UP." So, I left my homework behind and we went to the movies. UP is the newest Disney/Pixar movie about an old man who attaches a million balloons to his house and flies his house to South America. I thought it was an extremely cute movie, but Alex thought it was kinda lame (but cute, but he can't really decide). They show the movie in 3-D, so we are sporting our fantastic glasses in the picture.

Ok, here comes the stress part. Some of you may remember last month when I was having massive and painful headaches all the time. Because of a couple of other symptoms we decided that maybe my birth control wasn't right for my body. I went to the doctors and he up-ed my prescription strenghth and the problems did go away. I have always been taking my pills regularly and have been pretty consistant in months past. This month, however, I have been really stressed with summer school, working 35 hours a week, getting Alex a better job, etc. The week of my period came along and nothing was happening. I have been told that once you start that particular week it can take a few days to get your body regulated differently enough to bleed. Wednesday came and went, then Thursday. Friday, Saturday, Sunday...nothing. Monday and Tuesday also came and went....no blood....ever. I completely skipped my period this month. We were getting pretty nervous, so, just to be on the safe side, we went to the Student Health and Wellness Clinic and got a pregnancy test. First the nurse tried my left arm, then she tried my right. No blood. (Ha ha. I'm just not bleeding anywhere!!!). Finally the doctor was able to get enough blood out of the back of my hand to do the test.
10 dollars and 15 minutes later we got the results........NEGATIVE!!! Hooray. We were so relieved. It is not the time or the situation in our lives that we could handle having kids yet. Alex was SO relieved (he said he hasn't slept in 5 days, can't eat right, doesn't like being social...he was just so worried and so nervous). It was funny. The nurse told us, "Congratulations!" which I thought was hilarious because it's not usually something to be excited about. But there we go. I'm not pregnant and I will be able to finish school like we planned. It must have just been the change in pills, the added stress of finals week in summer school, etc. (Alex did his research to see why one might miss a period....he found lots of answers but was still not completely convinced or calmed by any of it).
Well, that's all the news for today. I have 3 needle pokes, I'm exhausted, I'm cold, it's raining, and I have the day off, so I'm going to take a nap. (So will Alex, now that he can finally relax!!).
Love you all!
Kristen

Fate of the Neon

2009-05-20T18:19:00.003-06:00

On Saturday (16th) the Dodge Neon got hit again! Same place! This time it was a hit and run kind of thing though while Kristen was at work. It supposedly happened around 4-5pm and the lady who hit it knew that she did because her window was down (as witnesses told) and she put on a "did I really hit it?" face and drove off quickly. Thankfully there were two witnesses there who saw it happen and they wrote little notes saying that they saw it and what truck did it. It is a minorish thing but the irky thing about it was that she knew and drove away. We filed it with the police and it is currently being investigated. If the lady would have put a note there and said she did it, it may have been okay with us... but it shows... and she drove off!

Oh yeah... just a side note... in my job searching yesterday I went to an antique store because the guy is a frequent DI customer and I thought I would check it out. He has some really old coins... oh how I wish my coin collection were larger. He has some Morgan dollars... ahh if they were only cheaper! There's a way to make me happy... find me an old U.S. coin! Hee hee Jk. Old coins are exciting though!

Our work at grandma and grandpa's!

2009-05-13T17:50:00.004-06:00

Grandma and Grandpa needed some help in the yard so we went to help them yesterday since we had the day off! It was pretty fun and well we got the job done. Cows had messed up their yard and they decided to put in a retaining wall because most of where the cows did their damage was on the slope in their front yard. So we did that! Anyways that's about all of the latest. We've both just been busy working and Kristen is doing her three summer classes!

Here I am!!!!

2009-04-28T13:26:00.003-06:00

Well, I don't really have that much to say. I'm just bored....waiting for 25 minutes so I can go to work. Basically I finished folding (and putting away) laundry, doing the dishes, waiting for the dishwasher to finish its cycle, tidied up the front room, made the bed, etc. Actually, it was kinda fun. I sometimes wish that it was my full-time job. I know, I know, someday when I have kids and do stay at home all day I'll be wishing that I could get out, but right now that's all I want. I want to be home when my husband gets home from work and have dinner on the table ready for him. I want to spend time in the evenings reading stories with him, playing games, making cute remarks. I realize that when we were both home 24/7 that was a bit much, but now that we only get 7 hours with each other (that is used for sleep) it makes me want to cry. I miss being able to see him at all.
Working at WalMart has been interesting. It seems like everyone and their sister is pregnant. One of my coworkers is due today, someone found out they were pregnant yesterday, and everyone in the break room is always talking about their doctors appointments, how they feel, what it's like to be pregnant, what they are doing, waddling around, shopping for baby things, etc. Seeing and hearing all of these pregnant people makes me want these next years to go by so much faster than they will so I can join that group too. All well. I'm sure everyone is thinking that it'll go by fast enough.....but at the moment, I don't believe that!! Yes, I'm having baby wishes. I know it's not the right time for us....we both need to get through more school and establish ourselves a little bit....but I can still wish, right?
Well, the dishwasher just beeped. I think I'll go empty it and head off to the drama of work. (That will be a different post. I thought I was done with drama when I left high school, but WalMart is just as good. People are silly.) I'm glad I have a day off tomorrow. Sigh.
Later for now!
Love you all!
Me

So much for time

2009-04-22T21:27:00.002-06:00

On Monday I was hired at the Logan DI. Yes, I still have the other part time job thing doing the fliers too. It's really kinda not fun in any way.... My schedule is usually from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. full time. That's not the bad part... the bad part is that Kristen was hired at Wal-Mart and works a schedule of 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. four days a week. WE DON'T SEE EACH OTHER! It's making me sad.

On Sat I had to get a new phone because my other one died... completely... the white screen. There was some sort of an after warranty replacement to get the exact same phone for $50... so I have the same looking phone... only new... and it works! The lame part is that I can't have any of my custom ringtones like my other "same" phone had.

This city of Logan is a happening place at the moment... within the last 15 minutes I have heard 3 different sirens.

Yay for a job!

2009-04-11T07:47:00.004-06:00

I finally have a job! It's really not all that great and it wears me out easily. I work for Lawn Pride as a Flier Distributor. It's kinda like those Boy Scout days of delivering food bank drive bags to every door in the neighborhood... only this is huge and ongoing. I like this job because I could actually have another on top of this one. I set my own hours just as long as I don't have more than 30 a week. There are a few things I have to do and I can't really deliver them in bad weather because it is pointless. I get minimum wage per hour and a $2 commission bonus if people actually call the phone number to have service done. Let's just hope a lot of people call to make all of this worth it. It seems like this place is bursting with job openings as we have been told would happen.

I think it's pretty funny that Kristen and I are both famous people! Well in actuality we aren't but if you google us you can find out that I am a famous singer, and Kristen is a famous painter!

Kristen got a call from Wal-Mart (North Logan-- the old one) and goes to an interview on Monday.

So that car repair insurance that I talked about... someone has apparently created it... I've seen commercials for US Fidelis and they do that supposedly.

Oh yeah... Don't forget to check out "Our Other Pages". We think the Random questions site would be really fun if you all told your friends and the site became more popular.

HOORAY!!!!!

2009-04-08T19:55:00.002-06:00

Sometimes I really love WalMart. The other day Alex and I were wandering through and we found some nice khaki pants for Alex for $9. We didn't get them at the time, but Alex went back a few days later....tag still said $9, but it rang up for $4.50. YAY!!! Well, I needed some new pants (that weren't jeans) for work, so we went to look. Because I needed some, we didn't really care about the price. We found some nice khaki's for me for $18. When we got rung up....9 bucks. Was there a 50% off of khaki's this week? We didn't know, but now we both have new pants for half the cost. I love that!!
Second thing.....USU e-mailed me today and said that they have awarded my pell grant from the FAFSA that had been submitted. (Nothing is known about the summer, yet, because it's from last years FAFSA and who knows?) But anyways, Fall and Spring I get $3,150 each. Totalling $6,300 for the year. That more than covers full tuition and books and will help out with paying Alex's tuition (unless he gets a grant of his own!). :) We are now eagerly awaiting the e-mail about Alex's acceptace and then his financial aid. We may, once again, get paid to go to school......too bad housing, food, gas, cell phone, etc are so expensive. Otherwise we would really be set not needing jobs at all. I would much rather have that happen. It's so much easier just to be a student and not have to worry about working, too.
Oh yeah, for those of you who haven't heard about it, I got a job at the DI. Woo. Exciting, I know!! Alex and I both applied at the same time. DI is a place where they give you a job, at minimum wage, and try to get you out of there into a better job as fast as they can. They just give people experience and training so they can qualify better for a different job. Anyways, they decided to call me and hire me, but leave Alex hanging for a while. In the mean time, I get to go to work 8 1/2 hours a day and Alex gets to stay home and do the dishes, do the laundry, and be bored trying to find a different job. I feel like my life is backwards. Oh well!! Maybe when I start my classes and have to cut my hours they'll consider hiring Alex.
Oh yeah, that's another thing. I'm taking 3 classes. They start May 4 and end June 19. One of them is just May 11 to June 12. It's pretty nice....but then I have 2 full months until school starts again. My life just works out really crazy. I have to take these classes, though, in order to apply for the Early Childhood Education program in July. They have deadlines for application July 1 and October 1 and 2 certain classes have to be taken and completed before you can apply. I have to commute half an hour for one of the classes, but at least it will be done and I won't have to fill up the entire Fall semester before starting the program. Everyone can pray that I get accepted July 1 and that everything will work out!!!!
Well, that's all my good news for the moment. I think I'm going to go put my poor, aching feet up for a while and read my book.
Love you all!!
Kristen

Some Clips we Like

2009-03-31T09:57:00.010-06:00

Smile! "Validation"

How dull can one be? (Audio only) "Why Mechanics Like to Deal With Most Women" (Disclaimer: We did not name any of these by the way-- because we know "most" people aren't as dumb as this person sounds.)

Great prank (Audio only) "Radio Host Prank Calls Chinese Takeaways"

News

2009-03-29T11:02:00.002-06:00

We are receiving another one of those crazy snowfalls at the moment... it's really lame but we are in Logan... what do you expect?

We are ward missionaries... we were called last week for that.

We went to the Crystal Hot Springs in Honeyville yesterday. It was fun but I don't think I'd go there again. They are a little miss kept and not the cleanest for the price. We got sunburned pretty good.

A lota things

2009-03-21T15:20:00.002-06:00

Okay mom, here's your picture of the outside of our apartment. Ours is the first door you see (bottom right).

We just yesterday were finally able to really use our dishwasher that we got a little while ago. It works great and we love it. It's really nice even though it is a little tiny.

On Wednesday we went to donate plasma. We got there at 11:20 a.m. and didn't get out of there until just after 5 p.m. It was crazy to only get $20 each out of that experience. If we go back before Wed we can get $35 for it. I probably will do it but Kristen isn't so sure on that. We both felt pretty sick afterward. At least they won't have to do the physical and all that good stuff if I do go again.

Kristen wants to write something too:
First of all, I got my acceptance letter today!!! I'm officially allowed to go to Utah State now! Hooray. I'm hoping that they have a lot of my classes during the summer so I can hurry and get school over with!! Wouldn't that be nice?

Secondly.....so, we get this dishwasher and finally get the connections so that it will reach the sink (our counter is too small for it, and it won't fit under the sink because it's too big, etc) anyways, we get the extension hoses and hook it up to the sink. We didn't have any dish detergent, but we did find some dish soap. Who knew that you couldn't put DISH soap in a DISH washer? It makes a great and wonderful mess of suds. We had great fun getting it all bailed out. Fun times!!!

Oh yeah, no one has to worry that we are going to sell our blood as an income.....it was just for the experience. And I never have to do it again. It was entertaining, though!

Too much snow!

2009-03-10T11:48:00.002-06:00

Okay so yesterday morning I said that it snowed 8 inches overnight. Well in total it snowed almost 16 inches... I thought it was kinda interesting so I took a picture before it was too late and the ruler could not be seen.

Change

2009-03-09T12:17:00.000-06:00

I looked out the window and what did I see?... A bunch of snow fallin' on me.

It's crazily snowing at the moment and I'd say there's a good 8 inches of snow... I think it's more than I've ever seen fall in one night.

We got a little bored of our furniture arrangement so on Saturday we did a nice change-around that gave us a lot more room and it looks nice too! The extra space is really nice.

One of our biggest problems here is that we have an infestation of Box Elder bugs. They have disappeared today because it has snowed, but when it is warm they are everywhere. They are really annoying.

We are awaiting about 8 different pieces of mail... almost all are checks from various places for refunds or rebates. Hooray for the day that our mailbox is flooded!

I hope y'all like the changes I've been making to the site! (Don't forget to check out our slideshows page [link is under the slideshow on the left]!)

Presto Change-o Car-o

2009-02-28T15:56:00.004-07:00

This is Kristen's car after Grandpa backed into it; and today, after painting it yesterday (and fixing it for a month or so)... not completly the same but hey it looks better than it did. I'd say it's not bad for my first time doing auto body work and learning from seeing others and the internet. I spent many hours on it and now know why the auto body shops charge so much for things like this.

Well...

2009-02-23T13:31:00.003-07:00

Well, Alex doesn't have mono. He just has some kind of virus, and has been feeling miserable, but it's just starting to get better. The doctor just called and told Alex that he probably has the Adenovirus. When Alex told me, I said, "The 'I dunno virus'?" It sounded like it!!! Funny!!
As for anything else going on.....nothing has been happening. We apply for everything we qualify for, create profiles, fill out applications online and off, go to SOS, Kelly, LDS Employment, etc, call people, e-mail people, check the job board at the student center.....and hear nothing. Ever.
On Saturday someone in our ward paid Alex to come and help paint an apartment (they are the managers of the complex next to ours) and tomorrow I get to help the wife clean a house. So far they are the only ones that have been interested in us.
It gets a little discouraging when we see nothing from our efforts. The worst is when someone will advertise at the student center that they need help with their two kids while she recovers from a broken arm. She needs help, I offer help, a week later she is still advertising for wanting help. Either she really doesn't want me, or she really doesn't need help, or something. Seems like if you had a broken arm, you'd at least respond to anyone offering help. Duh!
Anyways, right now, to pass the time, Alex is pulling off all of our baseboards, scraping off all the nasty glue, puttying and painting the wall again....and probably not putting the baseboards back on. We can glue them back on when we leave if they have a fit about it. They are so nasty, though,...the brown plasticy rubber junk. :)
That's about the fun of our life right now. Oh yeah, my friend from high school is going to bring us dinner tonight!! That's fun. We've been having some fun dinner/game nights with people. We've never had a Sunday alone, yet!
Hope everyone else is doing well!!
Kristen