Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Updates
My family will be very happy to know that I finally posted a couple of pictures of our boy! It has been tricky without high speed internet, because I have a lot of cute pictures I have been wanting to put up!
We are doing well and have a few updates. As you probably know, Jonathan had to quit his job (see previous post) and has been job searching in the Boise area, and we are staying with his family in Adrian, Oregon. It has been a bit frustrating and we have been applying to jobs and sending in resumes like crazy. Well, he did find a job! We were way excited, obviously, however it doesn't pay nearly enough. We knew that it probably wouldn't pay quite as much as we wanted when we applied (it is one of those "depends on experience" things), but we had our hopes that he had enough relevant experience for us to at least be able to scrape by with it. It is a job in an optometry office (ironic) and it is mainly a sales job (selling glasses), but since there are only three people who work there (including the optometrist) he will be doing all sorts of things, including probably making the glasses, which is way cool! We also thought that since that is the case, he would probably get paid an ok amount, since opticians, we have heard, make pretty good money. Well, like I said, he got the job, but he was only offered the BARE MINIMUM amount that was listed. Jonathan was able to talk him up a little, but only 50 cents higher. When Jonathan called me and told me that he got the job, I said "Yay!!" and then when I asked how much they would pay him, he said "you don't wanna know." My husband knows me all too well. :) But, any job is better than no job, so of course we took it.
He had his first day today and really enjoyed it. It is a bummer that the pay is so low - it is definitely enough to pay all our bills right now, but definitely not enough to pay rent. And we are so dying to get into our own place and figure things out. So, he is working there as of today, and we are continuing our search/hoping he'll bring in TONS of revenue for the company and get like a five or six dollar raise. Hey, it could happen, right? :) Anyway, we are really grateful that he at least has A JOB right now.
I have lots of fun pictures of a fun little spontaneous "photo shoot" we had the other day down the road in a pretty little area with some pretty leaves. I actually got a couple of the pictures to load, and will definitely load more later. Isn't he just the sweetest boy? Like my Dad always says, "he's a dandy!"
James is growing like a weed. His favorite thing lately is to look out the window to try and see the dogs and the cats. He gets SO EXCITED when he sees them! He is a great waver and will wave on cue whenever we say "bye bye." Today he was "talking" to my Mom on the phone (aka listening to my Mom talk to him!) and he waved "to" her, it was adorable.
He is my little buddy, and I actually think that in some ways he is a little miniature me! He has this new smile where he smiles so big and squints his eyes shut - which is exactly the way I used to smile when I was little (except my face was a bit more chubby!) I wish I had a picture of me to put next to this one so you could see the comparison!
My parents tell me that when I was little, at mealtime after awhile I would just kind of sit there, not eating much, until they tried to get me out of the high chair - then I would start shoving food in my mouth like crazy! James often does the exact same thing! Just when I think he's all done, I try to take the food away and he just wants more!
Another thing I did when I was little (and I actually have a memory of this) - when I was taking a bath I couldn't STAND for there to be dirt in the bathtub. I would FREAK out and yell "DIRT! DIRT!"and my parents would scoop out the dirt. (Makes me sound like a clean freak or something, but that is totally not the case, anyone who knows me well can attest to that!) Well, the other day I was giving James a bath and he was sitting there playing, when he all of a sudden stopped what he was doing and looked into the water. He found a little speck of dirt and pointed at it! I just had to chuckle to myself.
The other day I went and visited our cute friend Karli, who is in Jonathan's parents' ward. She was so sweet and uploaded some digital scrapbooking software on my computer for me and showed me how to get started. It is SO much fun, I am totally hooked and have already made like 15 or 20 pages. Thanks so much, Karli! Our little boys are close in age and played so cute while we did the computer stuff.
In other news, my best friend Janina had her baby this past week!!! I'm not going to give any of the stats or info, because I know she'll want to tell everyone on her own blog and stuff, but I just can't contain my excitement for her ANY longer and just HAD to say something about it! :) I talked to her on the phone today and it was so much fun. Love you, Janina!
So, all in all we are doing well. :) This has been quite the interesting couple of months for our little family and I have to say that I definitely have learned a bit about faith and relying on the Lord. It is hard sometimes but I know that things will work out somehow. I've been reading the conference talks and they help SO much! I just love Elder Perry's talk and it has actually helped me a lot. I just love this part -
Those of us who have been around a while—and Elder Wirthlin and I have been around for a long time—have recognized certain patterns in life’s test. There are cycles of good and bad times, ups and downs, periods of joy and sadness, and times of plenty as well as scarcity. When our lives turn in an unanticipated and undesirable direction, sometimes we experience stress and anxiety. One of the challenges of this mortal experience is to not allow the stresses and strains of life to get the better of us—to endure the varied seasons of life while remaining positive, even optimistic. Perhaps when difficulties and challenges strike, we should have these hopeful words of Robert Browning etched in our minds: “The best is yet to be” (“Rabbi Ben Ezra,” in Charles W. Eliot, ed., The Harvard Classics, 50 vols. [1909–10], 42:1103). We can’t predict all the struggles and storms in life, not even the ones just around the next corner, but as persons of faith and hope, we know beyond the shadow of any doubt that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and the best is yet to come.
We are doing well and have a few updates. As you probably know, Jonathan had to quit his job (see previous post) and has been job searching in the Boise area, and we are staying with his family in Adrian, Oregon. It has been a bit frustrating and we have been applying to jobs and sending in resumes like crazy. Well, he did find a job! We were way excited, obviously, however it doesn't pay nearly enough. We knew that it probably wouldn't pay quite as much as we wanted when we applied (it is one of those "depends on experience" things), but we had our hopes that he had enough relevant experience for us to at least be able to scrape by with it. It is a job in an optometry office (ironic) and it is mainly a sales job (selling glasses), but since there are only three people who work there (including the optometrist) he will be doing all sorts of things, including probably making the glasses, which is way cool! We also thought that since that is the case, he would probably get paid an ok amount, since opticians, we have heard, make pretty good money. Well, like I said, he got the job, but he was only offered the BARE MINIMUM amount that was listed. Jonathan was able to talk him up a little, but only 50 cents higher. When Jonathan called me and told me that he got the job, I said "Yay!!" and then when I asked how much they would pay him, he said "you don't wanna know." My husband knows me all too well. :) But, any job is better than no job, so of course we took it.
He had his first day today and really enjoyed it. It is a bummer that the pay is so low - it is definitely enough to pay all our bills right now, but definitely not enough to pay rent. And we are so dying to get into our own place and figure things out. So, he is working there as of today, and we are continuing our search/hoping he'll bring in TONS of revenue for the company and get like a five or six dollar raise. Hey, it could happen, right? :) Anyway, we are really grateful that he at least has A JOB right now.
I have lots of fun pictures of a fun little spontaneous "photo shoot" we had the other day down the road in a pretty little area with some pretty leaves. I actually got a couple of the pictures to load, and will definitely load more later. Isn't he just the sweetest boy? Like my Dad always says, "he's a dandy!"
James is growing like a weed. His favorite thing lately is to look out the window to try and see the dogs and the cats. He gets SO EXCITED when he sees them! He is a great waver and will wave on cue whenever we say "bye bye." Today he was "talking" to my Mom on the phone (aka listening to my Mom talk to him!) and he waved "to" her, it was adorable.
He is my little buddy, and I actually think that in some ways he is a little miniature me! He has this new smile where he smiles so big and squints his eyes shut - which is exactly the way I used to smile when I was little (except my face was a bit more chubby!) I wish I had a picture of me to put next to this one so you could see the comparison!
My parents tell me that when I was little, at mealtime after awhile I would just kind of sit there, not eating much, until they tried to get me out of the high chair - then I would start shoving food in my mouth like crazy! James often does the exact same thing! Just when I think he's all done, I try to take the food away and he just wants more!
Another thing I did when I was little (and I actually have a memory of this) - when I was taking a bath I couldn't STAND for there to be dirt in the bathtub. I would FREAK out and yell "DIRT! DIRT!"and my parents would scoop out the dirt. (Makes me sound like a clean freak or something, but that is totally not the case, anyone who knows me well can attest to that!) Well, the other day I was giving James a bath and he was sitting there playing, when he all of a sudden stopped what he was doing and looked into the water. He found a little speck of dirt and pointed at it! I just had to chuckle to myself.
The other day I went and visited our cute friend Karli, who is in Jonathan's parents' ward. She was so sweet and uploaded some digital scrapbooking software on my computer for me and showed me how to get started. It is SO much fun, I am totally hooked and have already made like 15 or 20 pages. Thanks so much, Karli! Our little boys are close in age and played so cute while we did the computer stuff.
In other news, my best friend Janina had her baby this past week!!! I'm not going to give any of the stats or info, because I know she'll want to tell everyone on her own blog and stuff, but I just can't contain my excitement for her ANY longer and just HAD to say something about it! :) I talked to her on the phone today and it was so much fun. Love you, Janina!
So, all in all we are doing well. :) This has been quite the interesting couple of months for our little family and I have to say that I definitely have learned a bit about faith and relying on the Lord. It is hard sometimes but I know that things will work out somehow. I've been reading the conference talks and they help SO much! I just love Elder Perry's talk and it has actually helped me a lot. I just love this part -
Those of us who have been around a while—and Elder Wirthlin and I have been around for a long time—have recognized certain patterns in life’s test. There are cycles of good and bad times, ups and downs, periods of joy and sadness, and times of plenty as well as scarcity. When our lives turn in an unanticipated and undesirable direction, sometimes we experience stress and anxiety. One of the challenges of this mortal experience is to not allow the stresses and strains of life to get the better of us—to endure the varied seasons of life while remaining positive, even optimistic. Perhaps when difficulties and challenges strike, we should have these hopeful words of Robert Browning etched in our minds: “The best is yet to be” (“Rabbi Ben Ezra,” in Charles W. Eliot, ed., The Harvard Classics, 50 vols. [1909–10], 42:1103). We can’t predict all the struggles and storms in life, not even the ones just around the next corner, but as persons of faith and hope, we know beyond the shadow of any doubt that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and the best is yet to come.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Train Whistles & Ice Cream Trucks
Have you ever gone on Craigslist and found your own apartment up for rent? Well, we did! Except it's not as crazy as it sounds, it is our old apartment, which we don't live in anymore. BUT, the pictures posted are of our apartment with our furniture and everything! I had a good friend email me, wondering if we still lived in Provo because she thought she saw our piano in a picture on Craigslist (she lived in our Provo ward and I taught her piano lessons) - so I took a little look and sure enough, there was our old apartment! Apparently our old landlord liked our cute apartment and kept the pictures that we posted online to sell our contract, and then used them again. I guess we shouldn't tell the new renters that we rented the place for about $150 less than it is going for now...right? :)
It was fun to look at the pictures again - I still miss that old apartment sometimes, we really loved living there! It was our very first apartment after we were married and it was located in the lovely area right between the train tracks and the freeway (I think I may have mentioned this in a previous post - about the knife thrower across the street and such). We have fond memories of the ice cream ("drug") truck (I can still hear that song in my head...), another strange and suspicious un-marked truck with a weird horn which we think sold produce...or something, the aforementioned knife thrower, our mailbox getting run over by a handicapped man driving a "stolen" car (it was seriously so crazy, he almost hit our car in the process!), the train whistle (which was incredibly loud but we got used to it and grew to actually love it!), waiting forEVER for the train to pass so we could drive home, riding the UTA bus to school with lots of interesting and crazy people (there was this one guy who rode the bus with me every morning who sort of mumbled/talked to himself and sort of to me - he wore these coveralls and carried a huge plastic bag full of aluminum cans, and he ALWAYS talked about the weather and the train while we waited for the bus...he was a bit crazy), lots of neighborhood cars with huge speakers playing Mexican polka music all night long, getting random knocks on the door by some interesting people (once this Hispanic guy came to our door and in Spanish asked Jonathan if we had any "gold"...hmm, not sure what he meant by that), trying to make our downstairs neighbors not hate us because of our piano (I can't say that I blame them too much, but we HAD to play it!), having our cute, elderly and I am sure well-meaning landlord drop in unannounced (in his defense, we liked him a lot and he was always very helpful and fixed anything that went wrong, and he reminded me of my Grandpa) - oh the memories.
Seriously though, we really do have great memories of living there, including our amazing ward where we met some really great friends (which I hope we will still continue to keep in touch with!) (not to mention our awesome game nights with the Thompsons, Clarks, Bastiens, etc.), my adorable and amazing young women I got to work with in our ward (not to mention the awesome leaders I worked with, Ashley and I could always find something fun to do, like raid the nursery for a snack...), our fun ward choir (which Jonathan conducted and I accompanied), our cute apartment (which was really very nice, despite the somewhat sketchy area it was located in...), having friends over to play games or watch movies (Janina and Matt! and Annie and Jordon! awww, we miss hanging out with you guys...), having Liz over for study parties, having Annie come visit via the bus every week, hanging out with Benjamin all the time (and doing fun and exciting activities such as throw hundreds of cards into a hat in our living room when the three of us were completely bored), and so much more.
I think that mostly it is fun to reminisce and I am just so excited to be moving into our own place very soon (hopefully! Jonathan has a few great leads and has a job interview tomorrow morning - once he gets a job we can start looking for a place to live!) and so excited to have a place of our very own again after living with my Grandma for over a year. It has been a wonderful year and we are incredibly grateful for the chance to live there with her, not to mention that living so near my family has been the best! But we are totally ready and excited to move on to our next great adventure! And we can't wait to get all our furniture and things out of the basement where a lot of it has been stored, and dust them off and make a new place all our own. And I bet it'll at least be as cute as our old one!
I am wondering, though, if anyone ought to warn the new renters about the knife thrower?
It was fun to look at the pictures again - I still miss that old apartment sometimes, we really loved living there! It was our very first apartment after we were married and it was located in the lovely area right between the train tracks and the freeway (I think I may have mentioned this in a previous post - about the knife thrower across the street and such). We have fond memories of the ice cream ("drug") truck (I can still hear that song in my head...), another strange and suspicious un-marked truck with a weird horn which we think sold produce...or something, the aforementioned knife thrower, our mailbox getting run over by a handicapped man driving a "stolen" car (it was seriously so crazy, he almost hit our car in the process!), the train whistle (which was incredibly loud but we got used to it and grew to actually love it!), waiting forEVER for the train to pass so we could drive home, riding the UTA bus to school with lots of interesting and crazy people (there was this one guy who rode the bus with me every morning who sort of mumbled/talked to himself and sort of to me - he wore these coveralls and carried a huge plastic bag full of aluminum cans, and he ALWAYS talked about the weather and the train while we waited for the bus...he was a bit crazy), lots of neighborhood cars with huge speakers playing Mexican polka music all night long, getting random knocks on the door by some interesting people (once this Hispanic guy came to our door and in Spanish asked Jonathan if we had any "gold"...hmm, not sure what he meant by that), trying to make our downstairs neighbors not hate us because of our piano (I can't say that I blame them too much, but we HAD to play it!), having our cute, elderly and I am sure well-meaning landlord drop in unannounced (in his defense, we liked him a lot and he was always very helpful and fixed anything that went wrong, and he reminded me of my Grandpa) - oh the memories.
Seriously though, we really do have great memories of living there, including our amazing ward where we met some really great friends (which I hope we will still continue to keep in touch with!) (not to mention our awesome game nights with the Thompsons, Clarks, Bastiens, etc.), my adorable and amazing young women I got to work with in our ward (not to mention the awesome leaders I worked with, Ashley and I could always find something fun to do, like raid the nursery for a snack...), our fun ward choir (which Jonathan conducted and I accompanied), our cute apartment (which was really very nice, despite the somewhat sketchy area it was located in...), having friends over to play games or watch movies (Janina and Matt! and Annie and Jordon! awww, we miss hanging out with you guys...), having Liz over for study parties, having Annie come visit via the bus every week, hanging out with Benjamin all the time (and doing fun and exciting activities such as throw hundreds of cards into a hat in our living room when the three of us were completely bored), and so much more.
I think that mostly it is fun to reminisce and I am just so excited to be moving into our own place very soon (hopefully! Jonathan has a few great leads and has a job interview tomorrow morning - once he gets a job we can start looking for a place to live!) and so excited to have a place of our very own again after living with my Grandma for over a year. It has been a wonderful year and we are incredibly grateful for the chance to live there with her, not to mention that living so near my family has been the best! But we are totally ready and excited to move on to our next great adventure! And we can't wait to get all our furniture and things out of the basement where a lot of it has been stored, and dust them off and make a new place all our own. And I bet it'll at least be as cute as our old one!
I am wondering, though, if anyone ought to warn the new renters about the knife thrower?
Monday, November 10, 2008
Haircuts for the Boys
James got his very first haircut today! He really needed it - he was starting to sport a pretty awesome mullet so we decided it must go! Jonathan also needed a haircut so badly - we were planning on cutting it a few weeks ago, but he decided that in order to be Superman for Halloween he ought to have longer hair. Then he had his ear surgery and after that we were too scared to cut it with his ear all stitched up like it was.
So I cut Jonathan's hair and then he held James on his lap while I cut James' hair. James behaved surprisingly very well during the haircut and actually held relatively still. We basically just trimmed the back and left the top alone. It isn't a huge difference but we think it looks a lot better!
It was kind of funny because when the first chunk of hair came off I just sort of held it in my hand and looked at it, not believing that my baby was big enough to be getting a haircut! It made me kind of sad in a way! I just stared at it and said "oh!" Jonathan's Mom thought quickly and grabbed me a ziploc bag to put it in to save.
When we finished the haircut James looked very pleased and started clapping his hands! It was adorable. Anna even got it on camera! Anna and Rebecca were our photographers - Anna with the digital camera and Rebecca with the video camera. Thanks, girls!
I've got some great pictures that I'll put up later!
So I cut Jonathan's hair and then he held James on his lap while I cut James' hair. James behaved surprisingly very well during the haircut and actually held relatively still. We basically just trimmed the back and left the top alone. It isn't a huge difference but we think it looks a lot better!
It was kind of funny because when the first chunk of hair came off I just sort of held it in my hand and looked at it, not believing that my baby was big enough to be getting a haircut! It made me kind of sad in a way! I just stared at it and said "oh!" Jonathan's Mom thought quickly and grabbed me a ziploc bag to put it in to save.
When we finished the haircut James looked very pleased and started clapping his hands! It was adorable. Anna even got it on camera! Anna and Rebecca were our photographers - Anna with the digital camera and Rebecca with the video camera. Thanks, girls!
I've got some great pictures that I'll put up later!
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Our Not So Reverent Yet Still Way Too Incredibly Cute For His Own Good Boy
We had a really nice Sunday with Jonathan's family. Church was nice and quite eventful, with the power going off twice during Sacrament Meeting, and with James not wanting to sit still whatsoever or be quiet at all during the meeting - or fall asleep, for that matter. Needless to say, I missed a huge portion of the meeting walking up and down hallways trying to get the boy to fall asleep (he was so ready for a nap but would not give in). Ironically, all of the talks were about reverence and I felt a little bad that my little boy was so ... not reverent.
Jonathan played the organ for Sacrament Meeting, and I filled in for the Primary pianist while Jonathan's Mom filled in for the Primary chorister. It was a lot of fun (and Jonathan was so sweet to take our tired boy for the last two hours of church!) and Jonathan's Mom was so cute with the kids. I think my favorite part was when they sang "Once There Was a Snowman" in "opera style."
James fell asleep in his car seat on the way home and hardly woke up when his Daddy got him out of the car, carried him in the house, unzipped his coat and loosened his shirt collar - and then he even slept for awhile in his playard! I had to share these pictures because they are seriously two of the cutest ones ever, and I cannot believe I got them to upload using dial-up internet! Go me. That's patience for you.
Tonight we got James all ready for bed, read him his books (including his Scripture Stories which luckily we remembered this time!), said prayers and kissed him goodnight - after which he gave me four or five huge wet kisses right on my face while even saying a "mma - mma - mma" kissing sound! Talk about cute. My face was kinda wet and sticky afterward, which was a bit disconcerting considering the fact that he's got a really runny nose today, but I didn't mind because it was just so darn cute. I was also glad he didn't bite me, like he did the last time he kissed his Daddy.
Jonathan played the organ for Sacrament Meeting, and I filled in for the Primary pianist while Jonathan's Mom filled in for the Primary chorister. It was a lot of fun (and Jonathan was so sweet to take our tired boy for the last two hours of church!) and Jonathan's Mom was so cute with the kids. I think my favorite part was when they sang "Once There Was a Snowman" in "opera style."
James fell asleep in his car seat on the way home and hardly woke up when his Daddy got him out of the car, carried him in the house, unzipped his coat and loosened his shirt collar - and then he even slept for awhile in his playard! I had to share these pictures because they are seriously two of the cutest ones ever, and I cannot believe I got them to upload using dial-up internet! Go me. That's patience for you.
Tonight we got James all ready for bed, read him his books (including his Scripture Stories which luckily we remembered this time!), said prayers and kissed him goodnight - after which he gave me four or five huge wet kisses right on my face while even saying a "mma - mma - mma" kissing sound! Talk about cute. My face was kinda wet and sticky afterward, which was a bit disconcerting considering the fact that he's got a really runny nose today, but I didn't mind because it was just so darn cute. I was also glad he didn't bite me, like he did the last time he kissed his Daddy.
We're back!
Well, we're back! We drove home to Salt Lake on Wednesday so Jonathan could go to his follow-up appointment for his ear - which seems to be doing A-OK, he just needs to have a hearing test in about a month, and then keep an eye on it and get it checked again in a year - and then on Saturday we drove back up to Adrian. So here we are! We're staying with my in-laws while Jonathan is searching for a job, and we are optimistic and hoping he'll find one super soon. Until then, we are having lots of fun with his family and enjoying spending a little extra time together.
Friday, November 7, 2008
The Next Victor Borge
For any of you who have never heard Jonathan play the piano, he is really good. He loves to play and has an amazing memory, he pretty much can remember any song he's ever learned. He is very talented. Well, those of you who know him know that he also has a great sense of humor. He loves to find funny ways to play the piano, like Victor Borge or the Marx Brothers. Here is his running-start rendition of Chopin's prelude no. 20 in C minor. Enjoy!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
School Days
Remember back in the day when you would check out a textbook for the year (for free, mind you) and write your name in the front? Those were good times. Jonathan was helping Rebecca with her physics homework while we were home, and look what we found!
Notice anything about this picture? Yep, that's our buddy Charles. Apparently he had this book in '98-'99. Small world, huh? Well, yes actually - it is a pretty small world when you live in the country.
Notice anything about this picture? Yep, that's our buddy Charles. Apparently he had this book in '98-'99. Small world, huh? Well, yes actually - it is a pretty small world when you live in the country.Just hanging out
We had a fun time hanging out with Jonathan's younger siblings while we were staying with them this past weekend. Here are some fun pictures of James spending time with Spencer and Anna. It is very rare for James to just lay still for more than two seconds, so it was so cute that he just hung out on the couch with his aunt and uncle for the longest time! I just love these pictures.
We are back in Salt Lake right now, but are headed back up to stay with Jonathan's folks on Saturday. We plan to stay with them for a little while and job search like crazy, and are looking forward to spending a lot of time with his family. We can't wait!
We are back in Salt Lake right now, but are headed back up to stay with Jonathan's folks on Saturday. We plan to stay with them for a little while and job search like crazy, and are looking forward to spending a lot of time with his family. We can't wait!
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