Valintine's Day

So this morning Valintines morning I get to babysit 2 kids I love so much. They are so much fun, and so happy this morning. So I thought I would give you some pictures of them. Hesston is 3, 4 in June. And he can talk so well, he is so smart, he always has questions, It's hard to explain how smart he is unless you spend some time with him. And Payton is just learning to talk, it's a slow process, but I swear she's atleast attempted to say my name at least once in the last month. She is always so happy, and so funny. I think one of my favorite things about her is how much she loves pizza for breakfast. Here are some picture. Enjoy! To hear the vidoe just go to the bottom of the blog and stop the music.It's not summmer time at all, but Karmyn got her this cute new bathign suit, so of course she had to try it on with her new shoes! So Cute.

Tent Adventures!

So I missed a few blogs I had wanted to write, like one for my 1 year anniversary back on January 17, which is also my brother Riley's birthday. My Dad's birthday on the 19th, and Jared's on the 5th of this month. But oh well here's one for one of my favorite advintures we've had since moving to Lethbridge.

For Jared's birthday we bought this awsome tent from Cosco with the money he got from his parents. We decided to set it up in our living room (it's not a very big living room).



So it's a 3 man tent with 2 vestibules, and it only cost us $50, which we both thought was an awsome deal!




So if you look on the other side of the tent you can see that we had to move the couch so that if you wanted to get anywhere in the apartment other than the kitchen or living room, you had to climb over the couch! It was so fun. Needless to say our house seemed so messy during this adventure, but it was so worth it!



We got the tent just right (unintentionally) so that we could watch a movie. We didn't have a air mattress and we didn't feel like hauling ours off our bed down into the tent, so we just stacked up the blankets, our bodies were still rather sore in the morning.

We had such a good night, one of the best parts about it, was when we took it down it only took about 30 minutes to get it back in the bag nicely, and get our house back and organized!

I would definantly camp out in my house again. SO FUN!

MOM!

SO today is my moms birthday! So I thought I would do a blog for her. I was sad to find that these were some of the only pictures of her I owned, but I guess it's not my fault she is the hardest person to photograph, usually you get a hand instead of the face, but I do love these two pictures.

This first one is from a trip just my Mom, Emily and I took in 2007, we got to visit my Aunt Fay in Utah. It was a very fun trip This day we went into SLC just the three of us. We walked around temple square and what not. It was fantastic.



This picture is with my Aunt Fay that same summer, we went up to this lake in the mountains for a picnic with some of my cousins (as you can see Spencer in the backround, so fun). Aunt Fay is my Moms oldest sister/ sibling, she is awsome, she has so much love in her for anyone she meets, and especially my mom! (And Fays kids are pretty awsome too!)



My Mom is an awsome cook, if there is one thing I am trying to learn from her, especially after getting married, it's to learn to cook as well as she does! She is super strong, and is strong willed. She also has this amazingly huge pain tolerance, I remember this one time we went camping, and there was this natural water slide that my mom had slipped on, she landed right on her wrist and it looked bad! I swear she had broke it, but she refused to go see a doctor of anything, and we kept camping and she still did everything she would have normally done, and I don't remeber her complaining about it once! Just this fall she was helping my Dad and Granparens cut up a moose and she ended up needing stitches, and when Colter and I heard about it, our first comment was " She must have cut it REALLY DEEP!" there was no other way she would have gone in, she would have just bandaged it up!

Some of my most favorite things she says is, she call us girls- The Amazon Women of the North. I love that. I remember when I got to start wear a "over the shoulder boulder holder" yup she taught me that. There are also some dutch sayings which I have no idea how to spell out.

All an' all I love my Mom ALOT! She is such a strong women, in so many ways, spiritually, physically, mentally. She is inspired, and I appriciate all of the talks we've had, and all of our laughs. I am so gratefull for an awsome Mom and I hope she has an Awsome day!

The End and Begining of Years

Alright, So Jared and I took this big trip to Utah from December 18 to 23, and I am sad to say that I have very few pictures for it. We aren't very good at rememebring to take pictures. But I am glad to say that despite the weather and Road conditions we made it there and back safely, usually just missing the worst of it!

We went down for a wedding of a mission companion that Jared had trained, we got to go to the sealing, which was very special since their mission president was the sealer. It was a beautiful wedding.



This is Jared and one of his mission companions, Brian Mealander. This was the big tree in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.



These two were takin just beside Assmbly Hall, just with diffent settings, in real life it was more like the bottom picture. Temple Square really was beautiful!



I felt very lucky to be able to go down, we were able to do a session at the Salt Lake City Temple, which was a very nice experiance, and we got to see temple square all light up for christmas! It was absolutly stunning, I'm sad I don't have more pictures. But I will add a couple on here. We got to see my Aunt Lori and Uncle Bryan. Also many of Jareds mission companions, and we got to spend some time with Larry.

Larry is a pretty awsome guy, He was one of Jared's favorite companions, and I got to meet him when he came up for our wedding last year. He was our best man at out wedding. He is so spiritual, and has an awsome sense of humor, and has some awsome stories. But we love spending time with him, especially since we live far apart, it is good times when we get to see him.

So once we got back from Utah we spent one night in our own bed then headed up to Claresholm on Christmas eve, and we stayed there until the 28th. Christmas was really good. This was my first Christmas from home, and wasn't all that bad, diffrent traditions and what not, but definantly not bad. There wasn't alot of the family there until boxing day, and then they didn't seem to leave. But it was fun, Jared's mom got a cute little puppy, which seemed to be the highlight.

After Christmas I headed up to Edmonton with Rob (Jared's brother), and Jared went back to Lethbridge to work for a few days, but he came up to Edmonton on the 31st to spend New Years with me and my family. It was so fun Robyn was home from Toronto and so the three girls and my mom went shopping, and cooked up a storm for New Years, we had lots of fun together, definantly a New Years not forgotten.

While up in Edmonton I got to go to Desiree (Woodruff) Kastendeick (sorry if the spelling is wrong, I'll work on it) sealing. Which was also spectacular! She married an awsome guy and we are very happy for them!

So that sums up the end of 08' and begining of 09' for us. I am very happy to be in my own bed now after three weeks of foriegn beds, and a lot of time spent in the car! We are back to reality and school. Which Jared starts his first official day on Thursday! We are excited for all the adventures that lie ahead of us in 2009!

Dansk Jul (Danish Christmas)

This was the tree that came down very shortly after our Danish Christmas.

Jared made delicouse Brunkager, which are danish cookies!

Once Heidi and Elizabeth came they put some proper Danish decorations on the tree

We watched "Polar Express" in 3D which didn't actually work out that good on our T.V.



mmmmm.... so this is Danish food, I still dream of eating it again one day.



Look how happy he is, serously, who knew Danish food was all you needed!?


He ate ALOT of Danish food.
So we played a version of white elephant, this was one of the many gifts recieved. It was awsome!




Then to end off the night is "Ris alamand" which is a rice pudding with almonds in it. The person who finds the whole almond gets a prize, and you keep eating till someone finds it. Karmyn found it, fairly quickly.

So just to explain for those of you who may not know, Jared went to Denmark on his mission. We have a friend (Heidi) who lives in Edmonton who came over to Canada I think about 2 years ago. Heidi and her daughter Elizabeth came down to Lethbridge and we made Danish food, and watched Danish movies, played Danish games, and made Danish crafts, it was so fun.

Karmyn and her kids came and had celebrated with us for a bit. We were sad that a couple of Jareds mission companions could not make it, but we hope they can come next year, as we hope to make this an anual celebration!

My Favorite Pair.

So I don't know how many people have "favorites" when it comes to clothes, but I definantly do, and pretty sure I always have. I had this one pair of jeans that I got back well I guess about three years ago. I got them from American Eagle, which I had never bought jeans from there before, but was recomended by a friend to go check it out. I did, and I fell in love.

Well, as you can excpect, I wore them all the time and they soon replaced my "old" favorite pair of jeans. But just a couple weeks ago, Jared and I were getting things set up for our Danish Christmas party (which is the next blog to come) and my jeans ripped! I didn't tear them or catch them on any thing, they just decided it was time. I had known it was coming for some time, I could see it in the knees, but I just wanted them to last till after christmas.

I know I could continue to wear the jeans, or patch them, ect. But it's just not the same, I went a bought a new pair that will do for now. I just think it's so hard to find a good pair of jeans. So I just wanted to dedicate this blog to good jeans.

School....I can do it!

So I started school 3 weeks ago, just at a little private collage, called Reeves Collage, here in Lethbbrige. It's a Doctors Office Assistants couse, it takes 8 months the complete, and is freakin expensive. The course goes in moduels and so new student don't have to wait for a new semester, they can kinda jump in at the start of a new module.
So I started the week that keyboarding started. Which was so easy I just relearned of to type properly (like the whole home row thing), and it was easy piezy! At the beggining test we were tested how fast we could type, and by the end of the week we had to either be able to type 50wpm or 10wpm faster than at the beggining of the week. They didn't make sure we were in home row or anything! It was a joke to say the least. It was easy to get 10 faster, and I was the most improved of the calss, I mean when thats all you do all week, I would hope one would improve! At the beggining of the week I was typing 26wpm (slow) and by the end of the week I was at 41wpm. I was feeling pretty good by the end of the first week.
Well I can't say the same for the past 2 weeks. We started up MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY!!! I kinda learned french in elementry, and Jared tried to teach me some danish, but I don't have much luck with remembering new languages, I have a really hard time with it actually, usually get really irritated with the fact that I can't remember things I learned an hour ago, and I eventually give up! Well medical terminology is a whole language in itself!
So as you can suspect I've been pretty frustrated, and sinc the course i so short we go through the modules rather quickly. Like a chapter a day, and three chapters a week. Monday-Wednesday we learn stuff, Thursday is all review and Friday is the test. And they are half days, and we use the same books nurses use... so it's a little intense, atleast if you ask me.
This will be the last week of teminology and hopefully the next module will be alittle less stressfull on my brain.
There have been a few times where I considered dropping out and working at Safeway, but then I remember I have been counceled to get an education if I could, and I figure now is a good time while we don't have any children.
I can do this, i can make it through this and have an excellent job in the end. I do have the brain capacity to learn all of this!
I feel I repeat these words to myself often...