One Fish, Two Fish

Welcoming 2012-And a New Job!

2012-01-18T16:43:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to express my excitement for a new year! 2012 is being met with open arms and hopes for a happier year. Our new house has been a huge blessing and we LOVE it!Our ward has been awesome and Brian is serving in the YM with the Teacher's Quorum and I am serving on the RS night committee and just got called to be a Primary teacher to 9-year-olds...we'll see how that goes. Our first week together was hectic and... not fun. We're trying to plan a fun vacation for the end of the year, are considering buying a car, and have a lot of home improvements planned so we're excited to have a fresh new year. 2011 was honestly one of the roughest years I've ever gone through-emotionally, mentally and spiritually. My family went through a crazy amount of problems, stress, trials and tears that literally lasted all year and some of them aren't over. Even being married has even proven less than blissful at points but looking back I can see that without all of the bad, life wouldn't be as good as it is today. It's made me very grateful to be married and have someone constant that understood, sympathized, helped me, calmed me, and worked with me to get through the problems. There's a phrase that says something like a piece of charcoal can't be made into a beautiful diamond without pressure. It's funny how Heavenly Father does that to us. Sometimes we can't make as much progress without having some serious pressure first. So bring on 2012!!

I'm feeling very blessed already this year because at the exact time I decided to start looking for a job again, and one in town at that, an opportunity came along. In tithing settlement we mentioned I was looking for a job so if my bishop, who is a physical therapist, ever needed more help I was available. 2 days later he told Brian one of his employees just gave their 2 weeks notice and a week later I had a job. It's been a different experience to say the least. He works with in-hospital patients and open wounds-2 things I'm not so comfortable with. Every day I feel more and more like a CNA which is way beyond my comfort zone and natural capabilities. There's a reason I became a dental assistant instead of a nurse! Some days it's hard for me to handle. Almost every day I come home feeling a little queasy about the things I've seen too. I really love helping people recover from illness or surgery and get stronger, it's very rewarding. But I don't handle smells or gaping wounds, or clothing changes or bathroom settings very well. Just the pictures he takes to chart wound progressions gross me out! So I'm just praying that I'll desensitize really soon! I'm probably only going to need this job for a couple of years but that sure seems like a long time right now.

Thanksgiving Weekend

2011-12-02T19:27:00.000-08:00

We had an awesome Thanksgiving weekend in Preston this year. We mostly hung out at Aunt Becky's playing card games and board games and eating delicious food. My family took Brian on his first trip to cut down a real Christmas tree (a long-standing family tradition) and Preston put on their annual Festival of Lights complete with fireworks and a lighted parade.

I just love Shan SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!

And this? I have no idea what she's doing...

Our New House Before & After

2011-11-30T17:39:00.000-08:00

Well we finally did it!! We got in our house on October 20, 2011! We've been working our guts out getting it cleaned, painted, and fixed up. Brian and his dad have been doing all the big heavy work and I've done most of the painting and decorating. We're so excited about it still. We just walk around going, "Look at our cool house." "Remember how we have this awesome house??" We're silly but it's been so fun and exciting. So here are some of the pictures. As you can see, we have 2 guest bedrooms so that's an open invitation and we're expecting some visitors!!!!

This is our living room right in the front door. It's one big room that continues through the dining room and kitchen so it's nice. Here's the before...

And this is the after....

This is our kitchen before...

And after a lot of scrapping, cleaning and washing..here's the kitchen after.

Our bedroom was painted an olive green color with a ton of cream colored paint sloppily painted over it. I think they were going for a 'textured' look but it just looked terrible. So we had our work cut out for us. Really...it looked bad.

So this is the after!! We love it! Brian put the chair rail up just the other day and it made it look so good! He's in the process of building a custom headboard and it looks good too.

Then we took an ordinary basement and made it...

...into a sweet theater room!! (You know you wanna come visit...!)

So this is one of our guest bedrooms before and after.

And this is the second guest bedroom before and after.

This is the laundry room/storage room...it scares me. Something about concrete rooms in a basement is creepy. lol too bad we have to do laundry so I have to go in. lol

Oh...and this is just a bonus. :-)

We have one more bedroom that's just an office/storage and the yard still needs some work but we're lovin' it. It's kept me very busy so I've been glad not to have a job yet.

Circus!

2011-09-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a tradition for the last couple of years to go to the Ringling Bros. circus that comes to Salt Lake with Shan and Jake. This year tickets were expensive and it didn't end up being a good weekend to meet up with Shan and Jake. So we had decided not to go and I've got to admit, I was a little disappointed. Brian had been in a 4-man golf tournment with work on Friday and they came in 2nd place. They got to choose from a lot of good prizes and he picked free tickets to the circus for Saturday night!! When Preston saw how excited he was about it he took back the golf stuff he'd picked and grabbed the other set of circus tickets. So they invited some friends and took Logan and we invited Gina and AJ to go. Maybe it's cheesy but we LOVE it.

2011-09-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Gina and AJ were able to come with us-happy birthday to AJ. We talked it up a lot so I hope everyone had fun....

2011-09-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

The circus!!

2011-09-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

Even Logan had fun. He really liked the music and lights.

My Birthday

2011-09-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

This is the best picture I have because all of the other ones were blurry but Kai was helping me out with blowing the candles out. And the tradition stands to celebrate birthdays with Grandpa Nelson. :)

2011-09-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

This picture is a little dramatic looking. lol I'd actually like to use the word, dashing.

Las Vegas

2011-09-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

We went to Las Vegas for our first anniversary trip. Jared and Amy gave us tickets they had to a mentalist show there, which was totally awesome. It was the first time either of us had gone and we stayed in the Circus Circus hotel. Of course it had casinos but it had some good restuarants and a whole amusment park! They also had circus acrobatics every hour and a whole floor with carnival games. Needless to say, we were highly entertained.

2011-09-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

Vegas At Night

2011-09-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

We only wandered out at night to see the water show at the Bellagio. It was pretty amazing. Much better in real life than on tv.

2011-09-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

We watched the water show at the Bellagio. It's pretty amazing.

2011-09-27T13:25:00.000-07:00

This jellyfish tank was sweet. Much better if I'm not standing in front of it, blocking the view. :)

2011-09-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

This is the tunnel fish tank we got to walk under. It was sooo cool. Cross that one off my bucket list. :)

2011-09-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

This was the awesome shark exhibit. It was a huge tank and had tons of different fish in it.

St. George Family Vacation

2011-09-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

Wayne and Debbie rented a house in St. George this year for their family vacations. It had tons of rooms and bathrooms so every family could have their own which was super nice. It had an indoor pool and an outdoor pool so the girls and kids took full advantage of that everyday while the boys golfed. Super relaxing and we all had fun. Kellyn is having Uncle Brian read a book to her.

2011-09-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

This is Preston and Debbie in the pool. Brian, Preston and I had come up with a new pool game and Debbie wanted to try. In this game you go underwater and sing a song for the the other person to guess. That's right-"Underwater Name-That-Tune." lol Try not to drink too much water though cus that'll make you sick. Trust me. Also try underwater charades for some good laughs. I have trouble getting to the pool floor and staying there so I just sort of float to the top in the middle of a round. Brian and Preston tried to teach me how to sink but all I'd end up doing is bobbing to the top and swallowing half the pool. lol

2011-09-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

This is Preston sleeping in the pool. Yes, he has 4 floaties. And yes, he was toasted when he woke up.

Jr. Miss

2011-09-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

Shantel decided to do the Jr. Miss program through the high school which is a type of pageant and she asked me to be her hostess. She worked really hard with interviews, practices, her piano piece and shopping of course! She did a really good job! She didn't win anything but she was glad to have done it. When I asked her after the winners were announced if she was ok with not winning she gave me a big grin and said, "I'm so relieved!!" haha. Lots of work but lots learned.

2011-09-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

This was her beautiful dress Jenny let her borrow. She got so many comliments and looked beautiful.

2011-09-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

Bowling with the Fam

2011-09-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

We went to Preston one weekend and went to good ol' Pop N' Pins bowling alley for some old fashioned bowling. REALLY old fashioned. You score by hand, it has some sweet color schemes, shoes older than I am, and who can forget it's fame in Napolean Dynamte? Everyone seemed to have a good time.

2011-09-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

What a ham!

Brian's Birthday

2011-09-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

Aunt Becky had a birthday dinner for Brian and we had a big party and of course Brian was right in middle of all the little kids. The real question is, who's harrassing who? It's gets hard to tell when they all get going.

2011-09-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

I got him a gift certificate to the Logan Golf Course and you can see that he was more than a little excited about it.

2011-09-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

Strength Contest

2011-09-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

I don't remember how this got started but somehow a pushup contest started. And then a contest with who could do them with someone weighing them down. (What can I say, we got bored...) I don't think they did more than a couple each but it was pretty silly to watch. Here is Ben doing a push-up with Mike on his back.

2011-09-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

Jake trying to do a push-up with Mike on his back.

Rock Band

2011-09-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

We pretty much played Rock Band every weekend at Mike's house. We rocked and probably could have gone pro. :)

Chruch Basketball

2011-09-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

2011-09-27T11:43:00.000-07:00

Are You Talking To Me??

2011-09-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this with Brian's permission, since he is the subject. I just figured it deserved to be documented because it's just too funny to forget. It happens enough that there will probably be subsequent, similar posts. :) (love you, Bri) When Brian gets really, really tired he almost without fail will talk in his sleep. And if I'm having a hard time falling asleep when he starts then I get a good laugh out of it. A couple of nights ago was one of these nights. As I lay awake staring at the dark ceiling Brian suddenly leaned over and said, VERY enthusiastically I might add, "Wow! That's cool picture!! We should put that on a jellybean! Yeah, that one...!" To which I immediately burst into uncontrollable giggles that woke him half-way up. He asked me, "What? What's your problem?" Usually at this point in these episodes I tell him what he said before he's totally conscious so this time I asked him, "Are you awake?" And he said, "Yeah. I'm laying wood floors, what do you think?" As if it were very obvious that that's what he was doing and why would I ask such a dumb question?? And then I really lost it! I was rolling around and literally laughing so hard tears were coming to my eyes while he got more and more upset the longer I was laughing at him, for what he thought was for no reason. By the time I got control of myself and slowly spit out the story between fits of giggles he was upset and turned away from me all huffy. But by morning he had no memory of it at all so it was fine. I don't know, maybe it was a stroke of genius and we should write Jellybelly....

Stir Crazy

2011-08-31T21:08:00.000-07:00

So it's been a week since we last heard from our realtor and she told us "just one more week." Well the deadline, today, has come and gone and we still have no idea. It was a long day to wait for no news. I'm probably going to go crazy. Strike that, I probably am going crazy. I really need to stop watching HGTV, spending hours on Pinterest looking for ideas, furniture shopping and looking over paint options. Because I'm losing sleep over it! I lay awake for 1 or 2 hours every night mulling it all over in my mind until I'm swimming in couches and swirling in paint colors as I finally drift off to sleep. The wait is killer and the decorating is ridiculous. We're feeling more and more stir-crazy with this on the verge of happening but being stuck with mere ideas and no outlet. We should try and be grateful that our short sale house could possibly be ours 1-2 months sooner than we expected but it not a fun wait. I guess we'll just keep keeping our fingers crossed.

Melt Down

2011-08-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

I'm so happy I have something somewhat exciting to post! Blogged two days in a row-go me! It's actually not really something I should be happy about though because it really became a big mess. Brian and I have a small chest freezer that we had to find a place for when we moved in with my in-laws this week. They were nice enough to clear a little space in their garage for it and then it was kinda forgotten. This morning my father-in-law saw a long stream of water coming from it and when he took a closer look he realized that most of the food was thawed! Something had happened with the plug-in and it wasn't powering our freezer, probably for a day or more. Lucky for us most of the food was still pretty cold and not completely ruined but it all had to be cook/eaten ASAP. So my mother-in-law, Debbie and I spent most of the day trying to salvage what we could. I won't go into detail about the looks of the bottom of the freezer after all the red meat was thawed but suffice it to say it was disgusting. We cooked 3 roasts, 2 lbs. of ground beef and 1 lb. of sausage. The rest of the weekend's menu is planned though with a big turkey and a few packages of steaks to grill. I'm glad it didn't all go to waste but it made for an interesting morning....

Caved

2011-08-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

So I finally caved in and made a blog for our life. It will probably be short and empty since we don't do well at documenting and for that matter, we really don't do much. :-) But here it goes. I thought since we have just moved to Nephi it might be a good time to start to keep family further away up-to-date. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will have gotten the house we want and can start posting all of the cool updates we want to do and that will give us something exciting to show. Crossing our fingers!