Playing Catch-Up!

    Jared and I have been having so much fun the past few days! The weather has been GREAT a few days where we took a walk around the agricultural center that's really close by. We had such a FUN Easter this past Sunday too! I got my hair cut the way I wanted it too!

    Work is good, halfway over. I'm busy most days, which is nice! And I am still finding time to work on school. On my days off work, I spend the time off working a little on school. But now it's CRUNCH TIME and I need to start working hard on finishing everything up. 

    We've had some great treat ideas too! Jared made malts a few times and I make white cake so we can cut up strawberries and cover it all with whipped cream. Hooray for malts some nights and strawberry short cake other nights!

    I've got a few pictures to document our really fun days! 

These is all our stuff for the Malts!

Jared carefully read the instructions to make sure he did them the right way.

Enjoying the freshly made Malt in its perfection :)

The agricultural center is pretty great! And it was an awesome Spring day, perfect for a picture!

Jared wanted to put his hand in the little waterfall. He's so cute!

The fun little path we walked on. 

Me on the little path too. Jared gets tired of him being in most of the pictures, so we figure I should be in some pictures :)

We both love the smell of the honeysuckle bushes, so we took a picture by them :)

 Our cute little hard-boiled eggs, waiting to be colored!

 We didn't have any dye, so we got crayons and colored them :)

 We made some cute eggs. The middle says "Our First Easter." I made the smiley face one, the flower one, the multi-colored egg with the light colors and the "our first easter" egg. Jared made the speckled one, the black and white one, the multi-colored with dark colors and the egg on the left. It's cracked with yoke leaking out :)

This is our YUMMY Easter dinner. Jared made pork chops, I made the salad, mashed potatoes and the deviled eggs. The chocolate that can kinda be seen is from his parents. Such a GREAT dinner!

Oh! this is my awesome basket that Jared got me! It's a cute basket filled with little milky ways, Ghirardelli chocolates and MnMs! And it shows my hair cut

This is another shot of my hair cut. Pictures don't do it justice...it's cut up to my shoulders and it has LOTS of layers. 

    Anyway, that's the whole catching up bit. I'll try to blog more and keep it consistent so I'm not always trying to play catch up :)

    Oh, and good news! Jared and I finished LOST Season 2! So now we are starting Season 3. We're just speeding right through all these!

Ride 'Em Cowboy!

    What a crazy past few days with the weather. Goes from cold and icky during the week to a beautiful weekend. Then out of no where there are tornadoes touching the ground the next day and it's raining all over. Then it's cold for a bit, warms up to a nice weekend and BAM! Back to crazy wind and rain. 

    The cycle never seems to end. Yesterday was so nice and warm outside, sun out all day. Woke up today to clouds and rain and the trees were looking like they were going to be blown over! 

    I saw a crazy flash of light that was just like a camera flash outside and the thunder was heard not even a second after the flash ended. I about FELL off the couch it scared me so badly!

    Things got better when the storm started dying down. At least the rain was gone, but the wind was still going insane. It would stop for a few minutes and then pick back up right where it left off. 

    The funniest thing was looking out and seeing this cardinal out there sitting on one of the trees! The branches were swaying up and down and all over, trying to throw it off, but it just clung their for a few minutes!

    Totally reminded me of the cowboys at the rodeos I went to while in Utah! Some pour crazy dude getting on top of some wild animal who is encouraged and forced to go crazy...

    I couldn't help but to cheer for the bird! He hopped off that tree as soon as the wind died down. Guess he saw it as a chance to get away from the crazy, lashing-out tree! Like that crazy tree in Harry Potter that would attack people. 

The Womping Willow from the Harry Potter books

    The cardinal has survived to ride more rodeo trees another day! He seems to like that tree, if it's the same bird I've seen the other days. He reminds me of the silly bird near my bank that will sit outside one of the windows and attack his reflection! 

    Sheesh, it seems these cardinals are always looking for some kind of adventure! Trying to beat up someone to show who's the "alfa male" in a bar, or riding some silly bull, risking injuries. 

    All I can say to that bird is "Yeehaw! Ride 'em Cowboy!!!"

Workin Woman

    First week of work/training is over! And it was pretty great overall. I've met some fun people, I think I've gotten the hang of the computer/web stuff, and I only work a few days a week. 

    Now I can work half the week and work on school half the week! Woohoo!

    It has been hard though getting used to waking up early and leaving with Jared. And when I have to be at work at 8:30, things get a little rough. 

    We wake up and start getting ready around 7. We try to leave at 7:30 in case their is traffic going downtown when I drop Jared off around 8. Because our internet was slow during conference weekend, we didn't watch conference and we are now listening to one talk each morning as we get ready. 

    Traffic isn't too bad getting downtown. It's nothing like Chicago or any big city. I'm able to drop Jared off and the roads to where I work are pretty open, so I can sometimes even get to work early. 

    But it's silly I can't work over my 20 hours. So if I get there early, it means I either sit in my car until I'm supposed to be there, or I leave a little early. I guess leaving early isn't so bad, except for when I get on a roll with my training and I have to stop in the middle of something. 

    Half hour lunch is taking some used to, as well :) I've gotten accustomed to eating whenever while at home, that being told when to eat and how long I have is a little different. Even at MWW Group in Chicago, I was able to decide when I wanted lunch and I had up to an hour!

    Working has been good though. Jared and I had a Kohl's gift card and we decided to use it on work stuff. I got a REALLY cute pair of paints for work and Jared got a TOTALLY AWESOME shirt! We'll have to put up pictures soon. 

    Also having my paycheck go mostly to savings will be awesome! We've been able to still save a little with just Jared working, but now we can save a bit more without cutting back on fun things...like an occasional pizza. 

    We went to the Nashville Temple yesterday, Saturday, and my heart was just so grateful for everything! We are so blessed to be in Nashville where Jared is starting his career and we are living on our own. We are so blessed for me to have finally gotten this job so we can save up money for emergencies, like in case Bob Dixon gives up on us. We are so lucky to have a temple only 15 minutes away from us so we can go once a month.

    Even though work might get a little tough sometimes, I have to remember to be positive! If I hit rock bottom, things can only get better! And I get AMAZING benefits working at Bank of America and the people are SO nice. 

    It's not in Public Relations, it's more of what I want to do. I got great experience working at a PR agency, but I'd much rather have the physical, face-to-face contact with customers/clients. Phone calls just don't do it for me!