The Maker's Touch

Sometimes on Sunday's I like to listen to church-ish music while I get ready. I really haven't done that since I have been married but today I broke out some Jenny Phillips and listened to it while I got ready. Jenny Phillips is one of my favorite LDS singers. Well actually she is my favorite. There are a lot of good ones out there but I just really like her for some reason. Her songs are really peaceful, encouraging and thought provoking. Today the song "The Maker's Touch" really had me thinking about my life. The lyrics to the song are...

I watch the stars
Fill up the sky
A billion lights that testify
His hand is in all of creation

And there is no doubt
That He has made me
He’s giving me life with
Each breath I breathe
And I feel a debt
To never forget Him

I am His child Made with His love
And it is enough to
Bring me to my knees
He’s reaching down
And I’m reaching up
And somehow I feel
The maker’s touch

The sun and the moon
Obeying his name
Marking the path
And lighting my way
All of these things
Given to me

So I will bow down
With all of the earth
And offer Him praise
For my infinite worth
For all of the light
He’s given to me

This song was really touching to me today because I feel like I have been being really selfish and unthankful (I guess that's not a word...but I am going to use it anyway) lately. The part that really struck home with me was "He’s giving me life with each breath I breathe and I feel a debt to never forget Him." I forget HIM way too much. It makes me really sad that I am able to forget my Father in Heaven who has given me so much and who continues to bless me everyday. I have so many reasons to be grateful in my life and I forget about them way too often. I am blessed to just be living. That could be taken away from me at anytime and each day I get to live, learn and grow is a huge blessing. The other part that was striking to me today was, " I am His child made with His love and it is enough to bring me to my knees." I am also not brought to my knees nearly as often as I should be. I need to remember how important it is to kneel down and pray to my Heavenly Father everyday. He really has given me everything I have and I feel so blessed. I am so grateful for the knowledge I have of the truth and for the plan that Heavenly Father has created. Everything truly does testify of the reality of God and the reality that he loves all of his children. I feel lucky to know of his love and to feel it each day.

So thank you Jenny Phillips for making me remember how loved I am, and for making me realize that I need to Remember my Heavenly Father more and make our relationship a top priority.

Milk Tasting With Carlee

Carlee came over on Friday night to work out with me. Just Dance was our work out, and it really does work out your arms if you play it right. Well before we played Carlee made us some delicious meatballs and we ate dinner.It was so yummy! She is quite the little homemaker :) I helped a little, you know, like I steamed the green beans that ended up being disgusting but anyway... We had a great night but we had to go to the store to get some chocolate. I mean, everyone eats chocolate before they work out, right? Carlee got some Dove chocolate and she opened it and guess what it said? We couldn't believe it! That was exactly what we were going to go home and do. Darren also ate a chocolate and his said the same things so Carlee and Darren were the first to hit the dance floor! Then I hit the dance floor after spilling water all over my shirt... Darren and I bought a coco late machine at target last weekend with our last wedding gift card to target. I am so glad we bought it. We seriously use it everyday. Well there have been all these steamed milk and hot chocolate recipes I have been wanting to try so we had a milk tasting. You know, like a wine tasting, but a milk tasting. We didn't make it very long though because we got all milked out but they were still yummy! To end the night we drank our beverages while watching a movie. We love Carlee and she comes over a lot. I am so glad that she still likes to hang out with us even though we are married! I love that I had the chance to live with her because now not only is she my cousin, but she is one of my best friends. She is like the sister I never had and I love her! Thanks for hanging out with us Carlee :)

Winter in Rexburg

We are back in Rexburg, and have been for a couple of weeks, and there is hardly any snow! It is a miracle for Rexburg. I am so glad that there is no snow because I hate driving in it. It is so scary to see everybody's cars swerving on the road. At first I was sad to be back because I just like being in San Diego so much but now I have gotten used to being here again and I am ok with it. I am off-track this semester so I got a job being a nanny for a professor. I feel pretty proud of myself because over 100 people emailed the professor on the first day she posted the job on the bulletin board... and I am the one who got it! It is SO hard to get a job in Rexburg and I am so thankful that both Darren and I have a job. We are really lucky! Darren works on campus and he is a sports first aid coordinator. He has to teach all of the student coaches first aid, work in the room where he tapes people and treats them and stuff, and go to games to help people when they get injured. I think Darren and I both have the jobs that we would really want. He loves taping people, and going to the games. I love the little children that I get to watch everyday. There is a 4 year old boy and a baby girl who just turned 1. I am so happy that I get to watch a baby because it helps with my baby craving just a little bit. Actually some days I leave their house thinking I don't want kids for a while and some days I leave really wanting a baby because the baby is just so cute and cuddly. I guess that's how being a mom would be. There are good days and bad, but mostly good :) And I get to do laundry at their house!! That is so great because I hate going to the laundry-mat and it is so dang expensive! Now I get to do my laundry for free and they have a really fancy washing machine! Other than that, I don't think there is too much new with us. Darren is taking classes...hard ones, but he is almost done with school! horray! I don't get to see Darren nearly as much as I used to because we are both so busy but I think that makes the time we spend together all the more wonderful. We are so excited to see each other at the end of the day and I really like that!

Family Time

Today my dad didn't have to work so we wanted to go out and do something as a family. After about 2 hours of debating what we should do we eventually decided to go to boomers and ride the go karts and play miniature golf. Darren started the game off with a hole-in-one...

Then he got another...

And another...

And then we stopped taking pictures after his third hole-in-one. I think he ended up with 5

I even got a hole-in-one

Gage got a hole-in-one but refuses to take normal pictures...

And dad got a hole-in-one but didn't want to take a picture of it, so this is all I got

Mom didn't get a hole-in-one, but she still played well!

After miniature golfing we headed over to the beach to watch the sunset. It was such a beautiful day...it seriously felt like summer and it is December! I have no idea how I live in Rexburg! Everything was so beautiful we couldn't help taking pictures :)

We found so many crabs in the reef. They were really big and gross but I had to get a picture of one. Overall we had a great day playing and watching the sunset. We have been enjoying the great San Diego weather and we will be sad to go back to the freezing cold!

Christmas

Darren and I got to have our first Christmas together! It is so nice to be together now for all of the holidays. We spent this Christmas in San Diego with my family and next Christmas we will be in Portland with Darren's family. We wish we could have had Christmas with both families but it just wasn't possible. Darren and I both love Christmas and all of the pretty lights and family time. The Christmas season is a wonderful time and we are sad to see it end, but good thing Christmas comes every year! I am thankful that my Savior, Jesus Christ came into this world to atone for my sins and to make it possible for me to return to my Father in Heaven. I love celebrating His birth and thinking about the little baby Jesus who was born in a stable. It is weird to imagine Jesus as a little baby because I mostly think of him as an adult, but when I imagine him as a baby I bet he was the most well behaved, beautiful and innocent looking baby ever. And I can't even imagine how it would have felt for Mary to be his mother. Well anyway these are some pictures from Christmas morning with my family... It was a great day and I loved being with my Darren and with my family.

Josh and his memory foam pillow

My dad with his new tie

Arie opening her Pottery Barn gift card

Darren opening a shirt from me

Gage and his new electric guitar!

And Darren and I holding up some of our presents...and wearing some. We decided that every year we are going to take a picture like this. It will be our new tradition. Darren and I are most excited about our kindle fire which we got from our parents but I am also loving my new beanie from Gage, my new coat from Darren, a cute Christmas pillow from Josh and Arie and Strabuck's caramel apple cider mix that I got in my stocking. We got a few other things but this is all we could manage in the picture. And Darren had to have his grapefruit that he gets in his stocking every year!

Something to Blog About

For Thanksgiving Darren and I went to Oregon and surprised his family. They had no idea that we were planning to come up there for the week so it was really exciting. Darren's family does this silly thing that whenever people come home everyone in the house pretends like they are asleep. Sometimes they even drop to the ground in the middle of the floor and pretend to sleep when someone walks through the door. When we were staying at their house this summer, I would always laugh while I was pretending to sleep. I thought it was so funny and I had the hardest time keeping a straight face. So when we went there for Thanksgiving Darren came up with the idea to ring the doorbell and then pretend we were asleep on their doorstep. They loved it that we surprised them and we had a really fun time with them in Oregon. We did a lot of black Friday shopping and hanging out with family. On Saturday Darren's parents work in the temple so Darren and I were going to go to a session so we could spend more tine with them. We drove Darren's dad's car to the temple and on the way his car started to act super weird. I thought Darren was just swerving a lot but a few seconds later we heard a pop and the car started jerking. Luckily, we were able to pull over safely. Darren got out of the car and saw that the back tire had popped. We were both in church clothes and we both had no cell phones. It is really scary being pulled over on the freeway with all of the cars zooming past you. It took us a while to get the car jack and the tire out of the car and I hadn't even realized someone had pulled over to help us. The guy asked us if we were going to a wedding, we told him no, but he said one time he was on his way to a wedding and his tire blew but no one pulled over to help him so he got all dirty. He didn't want us to have to get dirty so he offered to change the tire for us. It was so nice and we were so appreciative! We ended up missing the temple session but we were just happy that everything worked out. The next day when we were driving back to Rexburg our bad car luck continued. We had been driving for about 6 hours when we noticed that the speedometer on our car was flickering back and forth, it started to make us pretty worried and then we got even more worried when a bunch of lights started coming on like the airbag light and the ABS light. I told Darren to pull over right away, luckily he didn't listen to me and waited until the next exit to pull over because when we got off, our car completely died. Everything was dead. The lights wouldn't even turn on. We were driving 2 girls we had found from the ride board that we didn't even know very well, but we all got out and pushed the car to the nearest gas station. It was pretty lucky that we only had to push it for a minute and then the car was able to roll the rest of the way because it was downhill. When we pulled into the gas station we called Darren's parents and told them about what had happened. They said there was nothing we could do for our car that day because it was Sunday and the shops were closed. Darren's family just happened to know some people who were driving to Utah and they were an hour behind us. They came and picked up the two girls that were riding with us so they could take the shuttle in Boise back to Rexburg. A few people stopped by because they saw that we were broken down and they said they thought it was a computer problem with our car which is very expensive to fix. We were super bummed because of the situation that we were in and that we were going to have to miss class the next day. Even though we were in a stressful situation Darren and I remained pretty calm, except I did cry for a few minutes to my mom, but other than that we handled the situation well and worked really good together. We couldn't have been luckier about where we broke down. Even though we were kind of in the middle of nowhere, Darren just happens to have a great aunt who lives in the middle of nowhere. She was only a few exits down the highway, so after sitting at the gas station for at least 4 hours trying to get everything situated, she came and picked us up. We were worried about leaving our car over night with all of our stuff in the car but Darren's second cousin, Kay is a police officer so he called some of his buddies and had them drive by a car a couple of times. Kay also called a mechanic for us and he came out the next morning to look at our car even though it was his day off. We figured out that a connecting fuse had fried and that little fuse powers the whole car. They don't usually carry that specific part in the stores but the mechanic was able to make one for us. Once we got that little wire fixed, our car was good to go! And guess what? The fix only cost 25 dollars! Wahoo! We couldn't have been more blessed! Throughout this whole situation everyone kept telling us that we had an angel watching over us. Considering the circumstances, things worked out so well. We could have broken down in the middle of nowhere with no cell service and things would have been a big mess. God was watching over us and we realize that it wasn't just luck. Everything worked out and it didn't even cost us hardly anything to fix the car. We are so thankful for how things happened, and to know that God was watching over us. It was a good Thanksgiving week that reminded us of all of our many blessings!

An Update

I suck at blogging. My life is just way too busy to blog, but I wish I did it more because one day I will appreciate that I took the time to write our memories down. This semester has been good but SO busy. Darren has to volunteer for one of his classes and it is like a job he goes so much! I have a ton of busy work because of my major, but I usually like my assignments, I just don't like that they take forever. Other than school we like to take naps, watch 24 and go out together. We are obsessed with Applebees steak and we go there any chance we get. We also have a mid week date tradition of going to 5 buck pizza every Tuesday. Sometimes we go to Sammy's too because they have a buy one get one free deal on Tuesdays. Usually we are too full though. We watch 24 all the time and we are completely addicted. It is such a good show but it gives me nightmares! It is starting to get cold here, and now that we have a driveway we have to shovel it which is SUCH a bummer. We just celebrated Darren's birthday and now he is an old man. I think that is pretty much it. Our house is cute, but we have a lot of spiders and it is usually cold, however we still like it. We got called to be nursery workers and I am quite excited but if you ask Darren he might not say the same thing. I love spending everyday with Darren and I really can't believe we have been married for 5 months. The time has really flown by!

24 cupcakes and 24 bean dip. We had a miniature 24 party with Maddie and Jordan and we had to have 24 food!

Darren pretending to be Jack Bauer

Eating mummy pizza on Halloween

Eating his birthday dinner

His birthday package from his family

Birthday dessert: Darren's delight

Blowing out the candles!