What a cute little FAMILY

We did some family pictures on Monday. Here's my FAVORITE one. What do you THINK?

....MORE to come :)

Fun with the GIRLS

Chris's brother, Stewart, is in town with his wife Robyn and their 4 beautiful girls. We've been having A BLAST with them. They are getting so big and say the FUNNIEST things. Here's a conversation I had with Ashley ON Sunday.

me: Ashley, your hair looks so BEAUTIFUL today! (being a little sarcastic, she was looking like a RAGAMUFFIN---in case you don't know what a ragamuffin is, like my darling husband, please notice the picture :))

Ashley: I know, I take-ted a nap!!!

**I don't know how she picked up on my SARSASM. She is a big girl TRAPPED in a little girls body! Her hair really doesn't look as messy in the picture but you get the idea. I know she is going to HATE me for when she's older, but this picture was TOO FUNNY to resist!

These pictures are from my father-in-law Gary's house. The girls put on a show for us. They practiced The Wizard of Oz for me but then decided to just PERFORM singing for everyone else. The oldest, KAITLYN started by welcoming all the "ladies and gentlemen" and asking everyone to please turn off their cell phone. I don't know where she came up with that at 7 years old, but I just LOVED it! I could WRITE A WHOLE BOOK on the funny things I have heard them say just this weekend!

This is them during the show

Here's Chris with Addy after the show. They looked SO CUTE the way they were sitting and talking.Gary was kind enough to let Ashley put some GLITTER in his hair. It was so pretty!

Big Day for Chris!!

So one of our CHRISTMAS GIFTS was wii fit. I'm so excited about it! Its been so fun to PLAY and hopefully it will motivate me to want to do more working out. I know it can't be the only thing I do, but a very good SUPPLEMENT. Anyway, here's my BEEF. Yesterday, Chris and I got on for the first time. It weighs you and has you do some BALANCE tests and calculates your wii fit age. Its no surprise that both Chris and I are OVERWEIGHT and out of shape, so our ages were 40 and 38. It weighed me exactly what I thought but for whatever reason, Chris was being weighed about 30 lbs LIGHTER than he really is. Today, we got on again and its weighing me the same but its getting Chris's weight right now. So according to the wii, he GAINED almost 30 lbs! It calculated my age at 34 so I was very happy to loose 4 years. Then Chris did his...You're probably thinking his age went up, but that's where you're WRONG!! He is now 25. How does he gain 30 lbs and drop 15 YEARS. That's just not right!!! All of a sudden, I'm a 34 year old COUGAR married to some little 25 year old CHUMP!

Christmas Fun

Another CHRISTMAS has come and gone...way too fast!! We have had so much fun though. The season started with the annual WHITE ELEPHANT/KARAOKE party. Thanks to all who came, it was a BLAST! I don't know why I didn't take pictures, I didn't think about it till the next day. So those of you who weren't able to come can just imagine...

Next was the GINGERBREAD competition. Chris and I decided to shake it up a bit, and we made a gingerbread NATIVITY. It turned out so cute. Here's a few pictures so you can see how talented we are :)

Here are some pictures from the events from Christmas Eve and Day. It was such a busy few days, but so much fun. We feel so BLESSED to have so much family to be able to CELEBRATE with. THANKS to everyone who made our Christmas so awesome! We are so lucky to have so many people who love us.

Here's the dogs with their Christmas presents. Chris got them some yummy treats for being such good girls. This is Rogue. And Kona....

Now that all of the FESTIVITIES are over, we are just doing some relaxing. Its been so nice to have some extra time with Chris. We have been reflecting on all of the blessings we have in our lives and feel overwhelmed with the blessings the LORD has given us. Life has thrown us a few curve balls, but I know that we will be blessed for our hard work and endurance. Thank you all for all the support you give us, we LOVE you all!!!

Youth Conference

Sorry to all my fellow bloggers for once again being MIA. I've had so much going on that I just haven't had much time to blog so here we go. For those of you who don't know, Chris and I were called by our stake to be in charge of youth conference. It was a total shock and definitely overwhelming but we accepted. With the help of all the stake leaders and an incredible youth committee it all turned out amazing! We had such a great time working with everyone and planning this huge event. Our testimonies were greatly strengthened! Here's just a few of my fav pics. You might get lucky and get to see more but that's it for now. These are mostly of Chris and I and our youth committee.

I want to give a BIG thanks to my friend Kim. I've wanted to start scrapbooking for some time now but was so overwhelmed by the thought until recently. I decided it wouldn't be so bad if I could do it all digitally but once again just didn't really know how to start. Luckily I have a great friend who could show me how to do it. I'm not super creative so hopefully these will get better and better with time but for now, bear with me.

I also need to say thanks to BJ for his contribution. He hooked me up with photoshop and its AWESOME! I couldn't be doing all of the things I wanna do without it. So thanks!

Maybe I'll be a better blogger one day but until then, just be patient and I'll try to post some more pictures soon. LOVES!

Chemistry is the best, and so am I!!!

Yesterday in my chemistry lab, we had to do yet another stupid experiment. You know the kind where you heat stuff up for 7 minutes in order to clean it and then have to wait for "at least 10 minutes" to let it cool off. Then you weigh it and heat it up with a tiny piece of metal in it and heat it over a bunson burner for another 20+ min waiting for a reaction to occur. Then you let it cool for another 10 minutes so you can weigh it again. All for nothing...nothing ever happened! You're probably thinking "what a waste!" but that's where you're wrong. All that time waiting around for results to NOT happen gave us time for a photo shoot. Here's a few of my favorites. This is me with my new friend Danielle. I think we look very attractive, don't you? Those goggles are just so stunning!

Then and Now

Wow, I can't believe how much time I've let go by without blogging. I've been a busy girl I guess. Anyway, I keep saying that I need to blog about my birthday. For those of you who don't know, Chris and I were introduced when I was out celebrating my birthday with friends. I didn't want to meet him but couldn't find a way to nicely say no. The night we met, we were at Texas Roadhouse so its been our tradition every year since to go there to celebrate my birthday and our meeting. Time has really flown by. I don't know where the last five years have gone.

When that picture was taken of me five years ago, Chris just happened to be in it, and I'm so glad I have it to document that day. Here's another picture that was just supposed to be of me holding up my cake and Chris just happened to be in. I thought it was a funny coincidence and very appropriate to share.

Back to my original point. I had a great birthday. I took the Saturday before off so Chris and I could hang out. We went to Texas Roadhouse and ordered way to much food and took a ton of it home, which is always a great thing. Sunday, we celebrated with my fam with a turkey dinner...Theresa's fav. The next day, Jen slaved in the kitchen to make this beautiful and delicious cake for me. I'm still not used to getting to having a cake all for me but I definitely like having my own. (For those of you who don't know, I share my birthday with my big brother, Nathan, and my sister Theresa is just 2 days after ours. So growing up, we all shared the same birthday cake) Thank you so much to everyone who helped make it such a fun day. I hope I never get too old to celebrate my birthday!

Other than that not too much exciting news with us. Youth conference is coming up pretty quick so we are getting everything all ready for that. I don't know how we got put in charge of it, but I think its coming together finally. It will be lots of fun but I will be glad when its all over and I don't have to think about it anymore! School is still going well, only about 6 more weeks till the end of the semester...how crazy is that?! That's about it though. I'll try to not be so much of a slacker with blogging. Hopefully I wont let another 3 weeks go by this time! Have a great week!

Our Day at the ZOO...and other happenings!

Chris and I had such a fun Saturday! One of my most favorite clients, Debbie, invited me to her son's first birthday party at the zoo. Its been such a long time since I've been so it was so much fun for me...although I did feel a little weird being one of the only ones without kids. I swear, we were surrounded! I guess its the thing to do when you have kids...go figure. I told Chris that when he is a stay at home dad that we will probably have memberships and he can go with all the other moms. He didn't mean to mind that idea too much :)

When we got to the zoo we had lunch with the birthday boy, and of course some cake. My friend Nicole, who I used to work with, was also there. I haven't seen her in over a year so it was so great to catch up with her. Hopefully it wont be so long till the next time. After that we walked all over the zoo looking at the animals. We were so excited to see them, but they didn't seem to want to reciprocate the excitement. There were quite a few that we couldn't see because they were either in hiding or so far away. It was a little disappointing, but all in all, still a great time. We even ran into my friend from school...what are the chances?! It was probably the most exercise either of us has done in a while.

Later that night, we went to a free Lifehouse concert in celebration of Founders Day in Maricopa. Maricopa rarely has anything exciting going on, so we were especially excited! After we got there, I ran in to my friend Kim from girls camp. This chick is crazy fun so I was so excited to see her. There were also a bunch of girls from church there. Most of them were too cool to hang out with us....all but Rimini!!

Trying to take self portraits is not always successful, but I still like these pictures, especially the one of Chris picking his nose. I hope he doesn't get too mad that I posted all of these. The one on the top with my face cut off has fireworks in the background. I wanted a better one but Chris was tired of me trying so I had to settle for having my face cut off.

Here is me with Rimini (who by the way would not be very happy to see this picture but I just couldn't resist) and then one with Kim. This is Kim with her family minus one. Her boys were so sweet and even though they don't know me, they were still willing to snuggle up with me, probably just to keep warm, but I don't care...I'll take what I can get!

PS. Aren't you all so excited about this cool weather?! I'm totally loving it and being able to sleep with the windows open once again! Hope you all have a great week, later skater!!

Catch Up

I haven't blogged in a while so I guess I need to catch you all up. This week started out as normal...work, school... you know the routine. There are 2 girls in both of my classes at Chandler-Gilbert. As I started studying during my long break, they invited me to go home with them. So I took the opportunity to get away from school for a bit to hang out with them. It was so much better than what I had planned. It was so great to get to know both of them a little better and meet their families. They are sisters and both live on the same street. They are also planning on applying for the nursing program. I'm so excited to have 2 new friends to be able to go through school with!

On Friday night, we went to the Beecrofts (a family in our ward) for a young men's leadership dinner. They invited all of the young men's leaders, bishopric and spouses over for dinner, dessert and games. We had a great time and learned some pretty funny things about everyone who was there. I made cheesecake to share and I think I finally have it almost perfect. I think one more minor change till its just right.


Yesterday morning, my friend Katie gave birth to a tiny old man...at least that's what he looks like. After work, I was able to go to the hospital for a few hours to meet him. I always forget how small newborns are! He is so sweet and seems to have a great temperament...he didn't really cry at all the whole time I was there. We are so happy for you guys and can't wait to spoil Trevor!

After the hospital, I met up with my sister Theresa and we had Cafe Rio. It was such a delicious way to spend time with my sis! I think because we stayed to talk so long and my food was sitting right in front of me, I ate the whole thing and was so stuffed...totally worth it though!!

Well, I need to wrap it up. I'm sure I already lost Chris, and if he is still reading, then I'm very impressed, GOOD JOB BABY! Be sure to check out the Dogg Blogg to see the newest post. It has been so neglected with me being so busy now :( Sorry for the lack of pictures, but here's some of Chris and I being goofy before going to the leadership dinner to satisfy you a bit.

I love this one of Chris trying to be sneaking about peeking at me. His face is so stinking cute!!! See Jen, Chris can be pretty goofy!
Here we are with our HAPPY face.
And my favorite of them all....Chris was done!!

Don't you like the sock on the back of the couch?!?!? I promise its a clean one :)

Crabs!

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I keep saying I'm going to but just haven't done it. I've been staying pretty busy with school and work but I'm still loving it. Lucky for me, though, I had today off of work. We didn't really have major plans but it was so nice to just be able to hang out with Chris for the day.

We started the day out just being lazy and watching tv. We got a notice from our HOA that we have a dead tree in our front yard that needs to be taken care of (actually I think we've gotten 2). This tree has been replaced at least 2 or 3 times already. I don't know why, but they just wont grow. I know it gets watered but that particular spot is cursed. So today was finally the day to get it taken out. I went out to help Chris and he asked me to get something from the back yard. So I went out and the girls were SO EXCITED to see me! They were jumping all over the place and I couldn't calm them down. Finally, one of them somehow broke a bottle of lighter fluid that ended up on the ground and it ended up everywhere! So not only was I worried about the stupid dogs licking it up and getting sick, but I'm seeing visions of our house burning down. So of course my focus turned towards that. I could totally smell it on them so they both ended up getting baths...something that has not happened in a very long time. Even though I hate doing it, I love how nice they look and smell after that happens. I can even pet them without ending up with caked on dirt all over my hands...go figure!

After all of that got finished up we had a meeting to work on youth conference stuff. For those of you who don't know, Chris and I are in charge of organizing our stakes youth conference. Its going to be a lot of work but in about 7 weeks it will all be over. We are actually very excited about it. We love the youth and being able to spend time with them.

When we left the meeting, we decided we wanted crab legs! So we went to Harrahs for their seafood buffet. It was so yummy and of course we ended up eating way too much and making ourselves sick! But I did end up with a few cute pictures.

Here's Chris playing with his food. We don't have very good manners!

We ended up with a diseased crab. I have no idea what is all over it, but it totally grossed me out! I couldn't help but take a picture of it for all of you. :) And of course we couldn't leave without my name tag. I seem to drop it everywhere we go to eat. But Chris always finds it for me...my hero!!
Here we are on the way home. Chris is just too funny sometimes. Some of you may not know this side of Chris, but its my favorite! I love it when he is good and goofy like this!

Well, I think that's all for now. I'll try to be better about posting. And for all you Dogg Blogg fans, I'm sorry that it has been neglected for so long. I promise it has not been forgotten and will hopefully be updated soon!

First Anatomy Test

I'm so excited. Last Tuesday, I had my first anatomy test. I studied my booty off and was still feeling a little nervous about some of the questions. I've been checking online to see if my teacher had posted the grades yet several times a day since then. Well finally today they are up. I got a 96%!!! I'm so excited as this is the class that has been stressing me out the most. I guess all of my hard work has paid off. The average was about 74% so that makes me feel even better. I hate to sound boastful but I am just so happy! I hope the rest of the semester goes as well for me. Thanks again to everyone who has been so supportive to me in my decision to go back to school. I'm still totally loving it and am now even more excited to be moving forward!!

Cake Wrecks

I was doing some blog surfing just now and my friend Kim Wresh had a link to this blog so I decided to check it out. It was totally hilarious and I couldn't get enough. This blog is devoted to "cake wrecks" and cakes that are just plain and simply funny. I spent quite a bit of time looking at all of them. I think this one was my favorite! The story that went along with it was pretty funny too. So you will have to check it out. Hope you enjoy!!

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Thanks, Dad

Last week my brakes started making weird noises. I was feeling worried about having to take the car in and how much it was going to end up costing me but knew it needed to get done. We've put our extra money into me going back to school so we really don't have much right now. So I called my dad and he was more than happy to help. So be went over Friday night with pizzas and now I'm not afraid to drive anymore.

Here's what my old brake pads looked like compared to the new ones. I know its hard to see but I basically wore them down about as much as posssible without causing more dammage...thank goodnessChris was "Daddy's little helper"
My dad even stayed pleasant the whole time, he didn't even swear once!
So thanks again, Dad. We really appreciate you helping us out and saving us some mulah.

I Heart School!

I don't care if you all think I am a geek but I just have to say that I love learning! Although I have WAY less free time on my hands these days, I totally feel re-energized. I think I was feeling kind of "blah-ish" if you know what I mean; like I've just been coasting through life not really doing anything important. But now I'm feeling so pumped up again. No my classes are not easy, but it just feels great trying to figure it all out and putting it all together in my head.

I totally love learning about the human body and how it all works together. We're not learning about the most exciting part right now but it still is so amazing. I can't even begin to imagine how it would have been trying to create it. It is such a huge testimony builder to me. Every single little thing has a purpose and without it, our bodies would not function exactly right. I guess that is the way the gospel works too. Each one of us has a divine roll and if we don't do it, something will not function right. (I was totally not planning on taking this route when I started writing, but I guess this is where my thoughts have taken me.) I guess what I'm trying to say is that I know there is more that I need to be doing so that everything can run smoothly. I can think of several things right off the top of my head. I'm sure you have all heard someone say that if we just knew of the happiness and glory of the after life, that we would live our lives in such a way that nothing would get in the way of that happiness. I wish I had a better concept of all of that.

My challenge to all of you is to find something in your life that you are not happy with or that you know could be improved, and fix it. I'm not asking you to tell me what it is... just do it and wait to see the blessings that come out of it for you. I know the Lord has so much that he wants to give to us, we just need to do our part and live more worthy to be able to receive them.

New Glasses

In all honesty, I think it has been at least 5 years since I've had an eye exam. Now that I am in school and I actually have to read things at a distance I'm realizing that my old glasses are a bit mediocre. I've been wearing them and they were doing ok, but still it was a bit hard to read. I finally decided it was time to get new glasses. So this morning I went into Eye Masters and I can see again!! Its so nice to be able to see things so clearly. Of course it had to get worse before it got better. I had my pupils dilated so of course the sunlight was blinding. When I started, it was cloudy so I thought it wouldn't be so bad. But of course, I wasn't so lucky, by the time I was finished it was bright and sunny so I had to wear those AWESOME sunglasses that they give you. Luckily I didn't have to go too far. Anyway, the whole point of the story it I can see again and I have new sassy glasses.

Here is a picture of my eyes while they were still dilated...don't they look creepy?!?!?

And here I am showing them off. Don't mind that piece of hair going across my forehead, it's totally bugging my but I didn't feel like doing another one.

What do you guys think...How do I look?

Sunday Dinner

Ingredients for family dinner...$7.00

Large mixing bowl...$8.00

Large wooden serving spoon...$2.00

Watching my husband eat to his contentment......PRICELESS!!!

The Game

The company Chris works for has season tickets for all the major Phoenix sports teams. So every now and then, we get lucky enough to get our hands on these tickets and get to go to the games. On Friday we went to the Cardinals game. We had 2 extra tickets so our friends James and Janae went with us. It was so fun to hang out with them; its been a while since we've seen them. I'm not a big sports fan, in fact I was more interested in the belligerently drunken fool in the section next to ours. Everytime a song came on, he would get up turn around and dance and was so ridiculously abnoxious. He kept trying to give high 5's to everyone around him as if they were actually enjoying his company. I felt so bad for the sweet looking family sitting behind him...I would not want my kids to be subjected to such an inebriated man, let alone give him "knucks". He kept leaving the game and coming back with 2 beers at a time, one just isn't enough I guess. He had security guards talk to him several times. Finally he hit rock bottom in the last quarter and fell backwards onto the row in front of his. After that he finally got kicked out. We knew it was just a matter of time and I kept saying that we should cheer when they take him out. I ended up being so caught up with trying to get a pic of him being escorted out that we totally forgot to cheer. But at least I got a pic of it! The Cardinals of course lost. The game wasn't too bad until the last quarter when they pulled out the starters (it was just a pre-season game). All in all though it was a great time.

Here we are enjoying the game.Here's James and Janae I tried to get a picture of the fall, but its really hard to see but I think you get the idea
Here he is getting escorted out...YEAH!!!

One more of us overlooking the field.Then on Saturday, some friends of ours in the ward were sealed. It was such a beautiful sealing. The sealer was so awesome and talked about some pretty interesting and informative things. Their 2 boys are some of my favorite kids in primary and they were so stinking cute. I wish I would have gotten a picture of them but I suck and didn't. But here is one of us getting back into the car. I wanted to get on of us with the temple in the background. The only problem was that the sun was SO bright. So its not the cutest picture of us, but at least you can see the temple. I'm so glad we were able to go. I'm so happy for the Jaegers and know they will be so blessed for going to the temple to be sealed together. I love to be in the temple and feel the peaceful spirit that is inside. Maybe one of these days I'll be better about going more often. After the temple we went to Seranos with Laurie (Chris's mom). Since we were so close by her house, we thought it would be fun to take her with us to eat. We had a great time with her and were happy to be able to spend some time with her. I of course forgot to get a picture but I at least think I'm getting better about remembering to get more of them. Don't worry, Laurie, I'll get you next time!!!