Gratitude

A couple of weeks ago I attended one of the Church's addiction recovery sessions as part of an assignment for my psych nursing class.  I went because I had to and I left feeling more grateful for an assignment than I think I ever have.  I listened to dozens of people, most of whom I would never have thought were recovering from an addiction, who were in various stages of their recovery talk about the ups and downs they had experienced.  One man in particular discussed how he had had a particularly hard week and had sat in a lesson where he was asked to list things he was thankful for and he literally could not think of one thing.  My heart ached for this man.  He was in a such a low spot and was not even able to see all of the amazing things God has given him.   It made me think about how easy it is to get caught up in life and not even realize the incredible blessings that are ours.  So in an effort to remind myself of all that I have to be thankful for, here is a list of a few of those things:
- I am thankful for my sweet little sunbeams.  I seriously love those kids so much!  I am amazed each week when they say the prayers by themselves and they think of the sweetest things to say.  They are such examples to me.
- I am thankful for lots of new experiences lately, for our new home, ward and neighbors. Lots of opportunities to learn and grow!
-I am thankful for an incredible family and especially that we were all able to get together last night to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday!
- I am thankful for a garage.  Oh how I love not having to scrape off my car every morning!
- I am thankful for an incredible husband who risked life and limb to hang a picture for me this week!
- I am thankful for school and the blessing it has been in my life.  I still seriously love what I am learning and feel so blessed to be doing what I am doing!
- I am thankful for my testimony and for the knowledge that I have.  Especially to know of my savior and his sacrifice for me.

I know this list could go on and on.  Hopefully it will remind me to have a more grateful heart all of the time.

Mi Casa

We are now officially no longer residents of North Ogden, which is really weird for me.  

We bought our new home in Layton back in August and moved in over the Labor Day weekend.
We are starting to get settled a little bit and we are absolutely loving it here.  It is amazing to have so much space and we are also kind of loving not having neighbors on the other side of our walls.  It was actually really sad for us to leave our little townhouse and all of our friends in the old nieghborhood, but it was time for a change and everything has worked out perfectly so far.  

Don't you like it?  We do!
The yard needs a little (more like a lot of) help, but that will have to wait until the spring!

We are just excited to have a yard and to be able to have a garden next year!

And this is my favorite part of the house.  Seriously I never dreamed I would have this much counter space and cabinet space and I am loving it!  Oh and also we are also really loving the idea of having a garage that is attached to our house.  Whoever had the genius idea to that must be brilliant!

NY to UT

I had a CRAZY week last week. Let me tell you about it:

My sister Jenny that lived in New York was planning on moving out here to Utah, she and her husband had planned on starting their cross-country drive on Saturday, June 25th, only due to an accident, my sister's husband Brett needed to stay in NY for a few more days.  Well this meant that my poor sister and her 4 cute little kids were going to be stuck in an empty house for almost a week because everything had already been packed in the moving truck.  Well after one day of that she decided that wasn't going to work so we had this brilliant idea that I should fly out to NY on Sunday and she and I and her kids could make the drive together.  So that is what we did!  It was seriously on such a whim that I just kept on telling Brad that I couldn't believe I was really doing this!  But you better believe that I did it!  I bought my ticket about 2:00 on saturday afternoon and Brad was driving me to the airport by 11:00 sunday morning!  Talk about CRAZY!So I arrived in NY at 1:00 on monday morning and Jen and I had the van packed and we were ready to go by 11:00 that morning.  We had one stop we had to make before we could get on our way though:

A trip to Build-A-Bear to get some "moving buddies" for the kids!

 Do you see that cute little guy in the green?  Yep that is my nephew Isaac and this was the first time I got to meet him!  I am pretty sure that I am in love with that little guy!

Then we were officially on the road.  Lucky for me, we had to cross the Hudson River to get onto Interstate 80- which would become our best friend for the next four days. 

Oh, how I love that river, I still can't believe that I was in NY.  Totally makes me want to go back and spend more time there again!

The first night we made it through NY, Pennsylvania, and just barely into Ohio before we decided to call it a night. Here is us having dinner at Burger King somewhere in western PA:

We were on the road bright and early the next morning and we seriously hauled that day!  We went through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and about halfway through Iowa.  That means that we were in 4 different states in one day!  The kids were seriously awesome!  I did not think that we would make it as far as we did but they held up great.  We stayed in Iowa City that night and found a hotel with a pool which was great to get some of the kids' energy out.  Wednesday was another early morning for us.  We made it through Iowa and all of Nebraska, which may not sound like we did as much that day as we did that day before but- holy cow- Nebraska is a big and boring state. If you don't believe me, just take a look for yourself:

 I honestly don't think that I have ever seen so much flat.  It was crazy to look out the window and be able to see all the way to horizon, no mountains or hills or even trees to block it.  

I think the drive was starting to wear on all of us that day but we held up pretty good and actually made it to Cheyenne! Woot!  It felt good to be in somewhat familiar territory.  

Thank goodness for DVD players!  It probably saved our life a couple of times!  Definitely worth the investment!

On Thursday we only had about 8 hours of driving ahead of us so we decided to actually sleep in until 5:30am and stay for the continental breakfast at the hotel (which the kids loved- who would have thought!).  We traveled through Wyoming and crossed the Utah border sometime around 2 Thursday afternoon.  I have never been more excited to see a "Welcome to Utah" sign in my life!  I also don't think that I ever realized just how pretty our mountains here are!  

We made it to my moms house at 3:30 and it felt so good to be out of the car for good!

I also could not wait to see Brad!  This was actually the first time that I have ever left him since we have been married.  He has gone away a few times for scouts and things like that but I have never had to leave him.  I am such a baby and totally started crying at the airport.  But we made it through it and I was so happy to see him!  He is such an awesome hubby for letting me go on this adventure!  

3 and 0

Yep!  Thats right! Today is the "BIG" day for someone in our house and it is not me!  My Brad is turning 30 today!  I keep on reminding him how old he is and he doesn't much appreciate it.  Oh well, he knows that I still love him even if he is old.  

I threw a big surprise party for him last night and it was perfect!  It was so much fun and it was awesome for Brad to see everyone there.  Thanks to everyone that came and especially everyone that helped out! Here is a pic of the cake that I made for Brad. That thing took so many man hours, but I love how it turned out!  I think he kind of liked it too!

I really just have to say that I love my Brad so much and seriously think that he is so amazing.  He does so much to support me and help me.  I am a very very lucky girl to have him.  Love you Brad!  

Happy 30th Birthday!

Official!

So I took the biggest test of my life this week!  I was so nervous to take it and even more nervous to find out if I passed.  The week leading up to it was so stressful and I just kept on praying that I would be smart enough to pass.  Well I was able to log in on Friday and find out the results. This is what I saw:

Grade:  Passed

Oh my goodness, I was beyond excited and so relieved to see that.  All of those prayer were answered!  WOOHOO!

So what does this mean? It means that I passed my NCLEX for my LPN license! It means I am officially a nurse.  It means that when people ask me what I do I no longer have to say that I am just a nursing student, I can say that I am a nurse!  Oh wow!  That feels SOOOOO good!

Message Received:

Every morning for the past 4 years Brad wakes me up when he leaves for work so that I can pack his lunch for him and see him off.  Now this is usually between 5:30 and 6:30 in the a.m. so I am usually really sleepy and not fully functional. Brad always is sure to tell me that he is grateful that I get up with him every morning but I think this morning he maybe would take his thanks back.

This is a gtalk message that I recieved from him this afternoon:

so...are you sure you still love me?

'cause i didn't get a coke in my lunchbox...

Apparently the sleep that I give up every morning to pack his lunch isn't worth quite as much as his Coke is everyday....

Its a good thing that I love him and I know that he really does love me more than his coke :)

The Evidence

Last night (or I guess I should say this morning) around 12:30 whilst finishing up watching season 5 of 24 (yes we are a little slow), we saw an advertisement for some amazing looking ice cream bars. As soon as I saw them I really needed to have them.

So we may or may not have driven to the local wal- mart to get us some of those yummy looking bars.  Brad was seriously so embarrassed when we were walking in there. But don't you worry, true to wal-mart form we were still some of the best dressed people in there even though we were totally in lounge clothes.  And also true to wal-mart form, they did not have said bars that we wanted so badly.  But don't you fear, we found something else to tide us over:

And these definitely did not dissapoint.

See:

We ate our fair share of those things while we watched Jack Bauer get taken by the Chinese!