Josh's Baptism

Joshua's never really known much of his extended family. Two years ago Joshua was able to visit and participate in the baby blessing of the youngest daughter of Joshua's cousin, Chaz. We thought that was pretty special, and Joshua had been thrilled to attend that. Chaz and his family also drove down and attended our wedding. Since then we've been able to spend more time with them. They are wonderful.

Chaz is the cousin who baptized Joshua when he was eight. And last month they invited us to the baptism of Chaz's oldest child, also named Josh. We weren't sure we'd be able to make it down, but long story short...we did!

Joshua and I got a ride down to Salt Lake City where we had time to eat, chat with some really nice sister missionaries, help them chase a baby mouse (in the Visitor's Center! eek!), and check out some of the Visitor's Center. We loved the new temple model:

Erin and Josh picked us up and drove us back to Orem where Chaz and Erin had decided to spoil us and put us in a hotel room for our visit. I won't lie...it was so nice to relax in a hotel room! And since we had a little mini-kitchen we ran across the street to get some food at Win-Co (Ben & Jerry's...yum!).

Saturday morning was Josh's baptism!! Joshua was one of the witnesses and it was so good to be there with them on such a special occasion! Of course I think it's especially neat since Chaz was the one to baptize Joshua back in the day. (And this is the part where I feel absolutely terrible that we didn't think to take a picture of all of them together!)

While the rest of the family headed back to the house for lunch, Chaz, Erin, Josh, Joshua and I headed to Sizzler where they treated us to a wonderful lunch! (They really did spoil us, but I won't complain.)

That afternoon we went back to our hotel room for Joshua to do homework and for me to take a luxurious nap. I really just love sleeping at hotels. They have such fluffy pillows and blankets!

And I just have to say that the bathroom in our hotel room could have been made with me in mind. Painted yellow, with a curved shower curtain rod (those are just fantastic!), and an orange polka-dotted shower curtain! I loved all of it and had to take a picture:

We spent Saturday night getting to play with their kids. Joshua played marbles, video games, and other "boy stuff" with Josh and Zach. I spent my time playing Barbies and other "girl stuff" with Allie. Then Erin took me, Allie, and Zach to go swimming at the hotel pool. We had a blast!! Joshua and Josh stayed at the house and played games. They had lots of fun too!

Sunday was church, hanging out a bit for lunch, and then back to Idaho for Joshua and I. It was a short visit but we sure were glad we could be there for Josh's baptism!

Pinata

I wanted to do something out of the ordinary for Joshua's birthday. So I started to make him a pinata. I did the layers of newspaper around a balloon. We picked out and bought our paint. It was going to be green with blue stripes. That was as far as we ever got. This was in February since his birthday is March 1st.

We thought that our colors would be nice for Easter so we considered finishing it then. However, we still hadn't touched it again when our anniversary rolled around in June. Perfect time to finish it and celebrate, right? Well our anniversary came and went without a trace of our pinata.

My birthday is in August and we finally got serious about our pinata. We painted it! We used the same colors, but since it was for my birthday now, it was green with blue polka dots. We bought yarn to hang it up by. Joshua even bought candy and filled the pinata!! (I'd bought candy for it before his birthday, but of course it didn't hang around long enough to make it into the pinata in August.)

Well, we didn't break the pinata on my birthday. We skillfully managed to get all of the candy out of it without breaking it, and the candy was gone in a couple of days.

Halloween also seemed like a good occasion to break a pinata. Can you guess what happened with it then? Yep. Nothing.

I'm pleased to announce.... we finally broke our pinata!! It almost felt like a part of our family after being around so long. We bought candy for it again on New Year's Eve. That night we stopped by our stake party for a while. Really we just wanted some food. They had plenty of pizza and subs. It was delicious! Then we came home, filled our pinata, and settled in to watch a movie with some good ole beer of the root. Joshua set an alarm for a few minutes before midnight so we could pause our movie. We hooked our pinata up to the broom handle and were ready to break it open after a traditional New Year's Eve midnight kiss. :)

The finished product.

Joshua holding up the pinata for me to whack it!

Blindfolded and ready to break the pinata open!
So I think it was after my second hit that the pinata broke off it's string and fell on the floor. I waved my hanger around for a while but couldn't find it. So we gave up on the blindfold. Joshua and I took turns whacking the pinata until we'd broken it completely open. It was entertaining. I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time.

Happy New Year everyone!!

Christmas

This Christmas was my first actually feeling like an adult and the reason is kinda ridiculous . . . we woke up and showered before opening presents! That was monumental for me. haha

So Christmas morning we opened all of our presents. We both got the things we wanted and some surprises, which is always happy. :) Here's us and some of our new treasures:

After presents we had a scrumptious breakfast. I had to remind Joshua of the tradition he initiated last year - that he make Christmas breakfast every year. He'd forgotten but was more than happy to oblige me. So we had eggs, bacon, and chocolate chip pancakes. Yum!

My handsome man making breakfast:

Later in the day we talked to some of our family on the phone. Then we headed over to our friends, the Andersons, for dinner and fun! The Seagraves, Twitchells, and some-random-couple-from-out-of-town-that-we-don't-know (that's their real name) were also there. We did a White Elephant exchange, watched YouTube videos, played games, laughed a whole bunch, made people feel awkward, and ate! There was lots of ham, potatoes, rolls (we LOVE Krista's rolls!), and treats! We had a lot of fun!! Honestly, by the end of the day it didn't feel much like Christmas to either of us (hard to define but I think we all know the feeling) but it was still great! Last year it was soo weird for me to not be around family so this year it was good to at least spend Christmas with friends!

O Christmas Tree!

After not having a Christmas tree last year we were both soo excited for a tree this year!! Our problem last year had been that neither of us knew how/cared to take care of a real tree, but we weren't sure where we'd store a fake tree during the rest of the year. This year we decided we needed a tree! So we'd just have to find a place for it. And we found the perfect tree at Walmart. It's a decent size so we can enjoy it, but not so big we have no room for it. Plus, it was pretty cheap.

We couldn't wait any longer and bought our tree a few days before Thanksgiving. I was so anxious we ended up setting it up the day before Thanksgiving! It was my first experience setting up a Christmas tree. And I have to add that Joshua is a master at putting lights on a tree.

We did try to celebrate and give Thanksgiving some of the time it deserves, and didn't decorate our tree until a few days after Thanksgiving.

Our tree on Christmas morning:Having a tree this year made us both very happy.
We enjoyed it until after New Year's!

Thanksgiving

This year we decided that if we were in Rexburg for Thanksgiving I wanted to make our own dinner. It sounded fun to me. So that's what we did.

We had an awesome blizzard Thanksgiving week. There was SOO much snow! Joshua didn't have school that week anyway, but we got snow days and I had no work! (Excellent way to start a new job...a week of pay with no actual work.) Check out how much snow we had:

I think this was on Tuesday.

And here's right outside our front door. Keep in mind that

we live on the third floor, and we shouldn't have snow there.

With all the snow our friend, Ryan, got stranded in Rexburg so he came over to celebrate Thanksgiving with us!

I have to admit that I wasn't a complete culinary master, and I took the easy way out on some things (like using Stove Top stuffing - really I think it's better than homemade anyway). I guess I made up for some of the time real stuffing would have taken by having the world's worst potato peeler. It took me half an hour to peel and cut six potatoes. No joke. Peeling things with a knife terrifies me, so I stuck with the peeler. In case you didn't do the math, that was about five minutes per potato. Let's just say I'll be buying a new potato peeler before we have mashed potatoes again.

We had a little six pound turkey with one of those pop-out things to tell you when it's done. Everything else was ready and we were waiting for the turkey, but the thing wasn't popping up! It had been long enough, but without a meat thermometer I wasn't sure if we should take it out anyway. Ryan called his mom and she told us to take it out. Good thing. It was done perfectly!! I was pretty proud of it.

During the week Joshua had found a YouTube video of a crackling fire. We spent lots of time cuddled on the couch by our fire, singing "Let it Snow!" Here's Joshua and Ryan "warming up their hands" while I was finishing dinner:

And here's our beautiful dinner:
My loaded plate:

After dinner we made the treacherous journey to Ryan's to watch a movie and eat our pie. We had the pumpkin pie we made and Marie Callender made us a delicious Dutch Apple Pie too! ;)

Joshua and I made a last minute decision to buy a computer on Black Friday. Joshua was in serious need of a reliable computer for school. We checked out our options, and decided with the terrible roads our best bet was just to go to Walmart in town for a computer at 5 a.m.

We dragged our mattress out into the living room and pulled an all-nighter watching Christmas movies! We headed to Walmart around 4:30. It was crazy!! I had never been Black Friday shopping before. Yikes! So many people and the store was a mess.

But we got the computer we wanted!! And I got the little 2-quart slow cooker I wanted. (Now I have to learn how to use it.) Plus, we got a few movies. It was a successful trip! Just maybe not one I want to repeat any year soon.

Joshua and his new computer:

Pumpkin Pie

A couple weeks after Halloween, our downstairs neighbors, the Ortons, had a few uncarved pumpkins still and invited us to come make pumpkin pie with them. Pumpkin pie is my most favorite, and I've never had actually made from pumpkins pumpkin pie. I was stoked.

I think Rebeckah had made it once before, and she had the recipe, so we just did what she told us to do. :) We did a batch with one pumpkin, and the Ortons did a batch with another. It was actually way easier to make than I'd expected. The hardest part was probably peeling the pumpkins. We had a lot of fun making the pies, and even got to watch a movie while they baked! We like to hang out with the Ortons. Not only because of this...just in general.

We each made a pie that night, and we were sent home with a huge bowl of pumpkin filling. (I later attempted to make our filling into cookies, which I ended up having to bake as a cake. Sad. I've never been successful at pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. The rest we froze, and it became our pie on Thanksgiving!)

This was the most delicious pumpkin pie I've ever had!! I think I should do it every year. It was totally worth the time and effort.

Me with our beautiful pie.

Joshua cutting our pie so we could taste the yumminess.

I got a job!!

My first real job after graduation! I always want to say it's my first real job, but then I remember that my job at the credit union was a really good one too. This one just actually requires my degree!

I'm always jealous of those people who are kind of just handed jobs. I wonder how they get so lucky. Now I can say I'm that lucky too! The timing was perfect, and they seemed eager to hire me. This job really is a blessing for us.

So the week before I finished my internship at Head Start one of the afternoon teachers wasn't at work. I never really talked to the afternoon teachers much, and hadn't heard anything, so it took me a couple days to realize she wasn't working there anymore. I think it was a pretty sudden thing. After talking with one of the other teachers, she told me she thought they were looking to hire and really encouraged me to ask about it. I was a little nervous and waited until Friday to ask Rose, the manager, about the job. She seemed to get really excited, and said she'd had no idea I was even available. She asked if I could fill out an application and bring it back to her that day so she could send it in. They were needing to hire an assistant teacher as soon as possible. They were already planning on doing interviews for it Monday, and if I got it to her that day I might be able to get in for an interview the next week as well. Of course I jumped at the chance.

Monday was supposed to be the last day of my internship, and Rose came into the classroom to ask if I could go to Idaho Falls for an interview that afternoon. That worked for me, and was probably good because then I didn't have too much time to get nervous. When I walked into the room for my interview, there were 4 people there to interview me! That was a little bit nerve-wracking. Rose was there though, and I was pretty sure she wanted me to get the job, so it wasn't so bad. They went around the table asking me questions, each of them writing down my response to each question. Yikes. Somehow I felt comfortable and pretty confident about how my interview went.

In quadruple-checking my time logs (okay, so I don't really know how many times I'd done the math, but it was a ton) I discovered that I might need a couple more hours to fulfill my internship requirements, and to be on the safe side I went in on Tuesday as well. Rose told me how impressed they'd been with my interview, and I was feeling pretty good about it. When I was done for the day Rose hinted to me that she'd heard through the grapevine that I should be getting a call and a job offer. I was supposed to let her know if I heard from them that day. I anxiously carried my phone with me everywhere on Tuesday. No phone call. I told myself that was alright and maybe they'd call on Wednesday. After all, she'd originally told me I should hear on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I think I jumped every time my phone made a noise on Wednesday. Again, I carried it everywhere with me. The morning went by without a phone call. I started to worry. In the afternoon one of my references text me to let me know she'd just gotten a call from them, and she told them all sorts of wonderful things about me. I breathed a little easier knowing this. At least they were interested in me enough to call my references. But still no phone call.

On Thursday I didn't want to spend another day worrying and carrying my phone around. Instead I pretty much just convinced myself I didn't have the job. I hadn't heard from them yet. Maybe Rose had heard incorrectly. Maybe they'd been interested, but then decided to hire someone else. I was feeling kinda blue, but figured if I didn't have the job, they would still have to call me soon. I thought it would be easier to be happy about getting the job than disappointed about not getting it if that was the case. No phone call on Thursday.

Friday morning....they called me! And offered me the job!! I was ecstatic! I was also relieved. Friday afternoon I went in to the Head Start here to pick up some papers they'd faxed for me to fill out. Turns out everybody in the office had known since Tuesday that they were going to hire me. I was the only one who didn't know. I have no idea why they didn't call to offer me the job sooner if they'd made up their minds, but I'm just glad they did decide to hire me.

Since the next week was Thanksgiving (and I was hoping to get this job) I'd already requested most of it off from WW. I stopped by on Friday to talk to the person who does the scheduling. I was checking to make sure it would be fine to submit my two week notice, but just request all of that time off. I got it even better than that though! Since I talked to him about it, and he hadn't done the schedule for the next week yet, he told me Saturday (the next day) could be my last! He had me fill out a thing still, but I just put that Saturday's date and it counted as my two week notice!

I was supposed to start at Head Start the following Monday. Until I was leaving for work I had no idea it had snowed all night. I got to work, and there was only one car in the parking lot. I figured that meant there was no school for some reason, but went in to see who was there and find out. Rose let me know public schools had been canceled due to a blizzard warning so we got a paid day off as well. Sweet! I didn't mind one bit that I got to go home and curl up to read all day. Rose had let me know how to find out about the school cancellations, so before I even went to bed I knew that I had no work on Tuesday either! Wednesday we weren't scheduled to have school. Thursday and Friday were paid holiday days for Thanksgiving. Not bad...my first week of work and I got paid to not work for 4 days!!

Joshua told me I should write all of this down, as well as all of the reasons I think this job is so fabulous. Then if I come home hating work one day I can reread it and be reminded of how blessed I am. So here's my list of reasons why this is an excellent job:

• I get to quit working at WW!! I'd considered the possibility of just having 2 part-time jobs.
• I'll make enough money to pay our bills! Plus a little bit to save. Maybe.
• I'll work regular full-time hours - 8:30-4:30 Monday through Friday. Weekends off! Paid holidays. (We follow the same schedule as the public school district.)
• It's only 8 hours a day. I don't even have to take a lunch break because they feed us lunch and a snack during class!
  
• I'll be fed lots of delicious food because Rhonda is an awesome cook. And it's healthy food so I'll have a balanced diet for once. :)
  
• I get insurance benefits.
• I'm actually using my degree and for the first time getting experience in that field.
• Unlike some preschools, I don't have to write my own lessons. That's a huge plus for me. We have a set curriculum, and I like it a lot.
• I'm super excited to work with Connie!! (She's my lead teacher.) She seems cool and really nice. I think we'll get along.
• I get to work with kids! They're cute kids. I get to play with them!! (Playtime is always my favorite part of the day.) Maybe I'll be a better mother after having this experience.