Trip Home!!

So...I am way behind. We got back from our trip over a week ago and I am just now getting around to updating our blog. Better late than never, RIGHT?? Anyway, we had an AWESOME trip home to see our families! We drove 1700 miles through 4 different states in 8 days. LOTS of driving, but it was all so worth it. Our first stop was at my parents house to hang with them for a few days. It was so nice so be able to see them. It felt like it had been forever since we had seen them. My mom is so cute and she had the house totally STOCKED with all of the goodies that Tay and I love. We mainly just spent time together with everybody there and that's exactly what we wanted to do. My sisters were both there for a bit and it was a lot of fun. There was, however, a mishap with the carpet while we were there. Yep...you guessed it. My dogs chewed the brand new carpet in the addition to their house. I was SOOOO mortified! Want to know the ironic part? My sister's dog had chewed the exact same spot a couple of weeks ago. Thank goodness we were able to get that fixed before we left! Here's my cute little mom! If you look closely, she was crying because this was actually when we were getting ready to leave. I miss her so much already!

Here's Sadie begging for forgiveness after chewing the carpet. She so knew that she was in trouble and kept buttering my mom up to get her to forgive her.

Here's Shay and Dev. Yes...he really is that tall! 6'8".

So, from my mom's house in Idaho, we headed down to Utah to see the new baby! I was seriously SOOO excited so see her. She is seriously the most beautiful baby! I was such a baby hog the whole time. I pretty much held her hostage the entire time I was there. It's amazing how much you can feel the spirit and reverence that a new baby brings. She brings such a feeling of peace and has such a sweet spirit. LOVE HER!!!

Here's a picture of us girls! Try not to notice the fact that Nicole is a total rockstar and doesn't even look like she has even a tiny little belly. Yes, that is her brand new baby I'm holding here :) She is such a hot mamma!! She was such a good hostess too. She wouldn't quit doing things for us even though she was hurting because she just had her baby. Nicole, I love you!

Here's the studs doing something manly on the computer.

So, Boo has been having a few problems with adjusting to sharing all the attention with Marley, so Tay and I wanted to do something with just her that would be fun. What better place to have fun with a 2 year old than McDonalds?? She was so excited and adorable the whole time. She got chicken nuggets and had to dip them in EVERYTHING she could find. There was some really good music in there and she was totally dancing and shaking her cute little bum.

She really loved her juice, but gave it up pretty fast when she found out we were going to go play on the toys.

Yes, I climbed up in that stupid toy to help her get down the slide. Don't judge me...Taylor did it first! I couldn't believe how brave she was. We went with her the first 2 times and then she totally went all by herself and made friends. I literally had to bribe her with ice cream to get her out of the play area. It was so much fun and then she fell asleep on the 2 minute drive home! She is such a cutie and we love her soo much!

Then, Kent, Kathleen, and the girls came to their house to hang with all of us. I was sooooo excited to see them. Kathleen is really starting to show now and she is so cute pregnant. I can't wait to meet their little girl too. I'm sure she will be just as adorable as their other 2 girls! Kent was trying to show Kathleen just how much he empathized with her pregnancy, so we had a contest to see who had the most pregnant belly. You decide for yourself, but I say Kent wins!!

It was sooo hilarious when Kent did this, but he really had to try to get his belly out that far!

Then, we headed back to Idaho to Tay's parents house. Here's Dane showing off his muscles. Too bad Tay's Muscles are GINORMOUS and nobody quite compares to him!

We had a blast hanging out with everybody. Marsha, Tay and I went to Avatar on Friday. I thought that it sounded dumb, but I really enjoyed it and thought that it was well done! I also elicited the help of all the girls to make the watch bands that you can switch out with beads. It was a lot of fun and I got 4 watch bands!

I couldn't get a good picture of everybody so Travis has to take one for the team on this one. I have NO IDEA what he was doing!

So after 7 fun filled days, it was time to leave. We were so sad to have to say goodbye to everybody, but on Sunday morning we left to go home.

I just thought that I'd throw this picture of Bentley and Sadie in because this is how they sat in the car on the way home. It was soooo cute!

Well, we had such a fun time with our families. We didn't get to do everything that we wanted to because time was so short. We really wanted to see some friends as well, but it was crazy busy. (Sorry Andrew and Shandee....We miss you guys!) Thanks to everybody who took such good care of us. We love you all.

GOODBYE 2009!

I'm always surprised at how fast time flies! I can't believe that I am going to have to start writing 2010. Let me tell you how much of an old lady I am. On New Year's Eve I worked until about 5:30 and came home. We don't know many people here, so we just decided to have a low key night, get some pizza, and watch a movie. So anyways, I came home and, being the old lady that I am, was ready for bed by about 8:00, but Tay insisted that I needed to stay up. So, I dragged my pillow out onto the couch and pretty much passed out long before midnight. Then, at midnight, Tay yelled "HAPPY NEW YEAR" in the living room, my crazy neighbors started firing off definitely illegal fireworks and I got majorly GRUMPY. Anyways, not the best way to start off the new year.
On New Year's Eve, Tay and I were talking to Nicole and Travis on Skype about all of the things that happened in 2009. It's amazing how much can happen to change your life in just one year! This past year, I graduated from PA school and started my first job in Moses Lake, WA. What a ride! Taylor was finally able to go back to school to start working on his degree again. Those have been two of the major changes in our lives, but there were many, many things that happened in both of our families as well. I have to admit that I take a lot of things for granted. I have come to realize since we have moved how much I took our families for granted. I mean, I loved spending time with them, but I never realized how hard it would be to not see them for extended periods of time. I also take my poor husband for granted. He does so much for me and is so sweet. I don't know how he does it. I always say that if I was married to somebody like me, I would have been divorced a long time ago! It is my New Year's resolution to be more grateful and show my gratitude more often.
As we start the new year out, Tay will be starting up his next semester and I will be continuing on in my job. We are pretty boring, but oh well. We don't have anything too excited planned yet, but hopefully, we will be able to take a nice vacation this year sometime.
Here's a total change of subject, but in exactly 1 week, Tay and I are leaving to visit our families! We are soooo excited and can't wait to see everybody! Nicole...seriously, tell the baby to come out already so we will be able to see her!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

I can't believe how much I love the holiday season. Everything seems so different than other times of the year. There's a bit of magic in it all! Quite a few people in our neighborhood went all out on decorating their houses for the Christmas season. They have lights ALL over their houses! Every time I drive by, it makes me happy. It also makes me wish my womanly powers could have convinced Taylor to put up Christmas lights on our house:). I will really have to work on those powers for next year! The holiday season tends to bring out the best in people. The company that I work for has something called the Angel Fund. People donate to it year round and especially during the holidays. There is so much poverty and so many people who need help that they picked 6 families in need and decided to use the Angel Fund to give them a Christmas. The families had written down Christmas wishes to give us ideas on what to get them. The family my group was in charge of had 4 small children whose only request for presents was to get them coats to wear in the cold weather. We had a budget to stay within to get them presents and a Christmas dinner. I couldn't believe how generous people were with donations. We were able to get them so much due to generous business owners and donations from people. We were able to buy them coats as well as other clothes and toys for the kids. On Friday, we went to deliver a whole truck full of gifts and food to this family. It was so amazing to see the wide eyes on the kids as they saw all of the wrapped gifts. What a way to feel the true holiday spirit!
Our Christmas season has consisted of work, school and a little bit of shopping. We won't be able to go home for Christmas this year and that has been harder to accept than I thought it might be. The best part of the holidays is to be with family. We are actually going to spend Christmas with Jared and Marianne and their kids. It is so nice to have some family close to spend the holiday with! We are so excited to go!
Taylor just finished his semester. He might kill me for announcing this, but HE GOT STRAIGHT A's!! I'm so proud of him! His classes were pretty time consuming, but he did really well.
Here are some random pictures. We did our best to decorate our house up a little bit for Christmas. Our tree is real and I LOVE IT!! It smells soooo good and it is so beautiful. We put it up the week after Thanksgiving and I have wanted to have it lit up every minute of the day. The pictures don't do it justice, but we love it!

Tay did a good job getting all the lights on the tree. That's my least favorite part of decorating the tree, but he handled it like a pro!

I love this little snowman. Taylors mom gave us this Nativity scene and it is sooo pretty! I don't have one of those fancy backdrops for this, so I just put it on the table. Kind of ghetto, but I still love it!

I spent my afternoon yesterday wrapping presents. I really love wrapping and making the presents look pretty!

Here's a couple of pictures from the drive to Spokane to go shopping. I was so proud of myself for remembering the camera and wanted to take a bunch of pictures. Apparently, I forgot how easily distracted I am because I got 2 pictures from the car, but that was as far as it got. The mall there was really huge and cool. We also ate at this great little Italian restaurant called Tomato Street. It was really good. Fun trip overall.

Taylor and I read a book together this month called "The Christmas Sweater" by Glenn Beck. As most of you know, my husband is so obsessed with Glenn Beck that I wouldn't be surprised if he got arrested for stalking charges. Whether you are a fan of the man or not, I would highly suggest this book! It is so inspirational and has a really great message. Perfect for the Christmas season and a great way to keep the true spirit of Christmas in mind.

Anyway, we hope that everybody has a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!

THANKSGIVING

So...I can honestly say that I will NEVER take being able to show up at somebody's house where a delicious Thanksgiving dinner is already prepared for granted again! I don't know how people do it every year! I was surprised at how much work and time went into preparing one meal. I think all of this stems from the fact that I am a perfectionist. Nothing I do ever turns out absolutely PERFECT, but I always really want it to. So, of course, I wanted this dinner to be perfect. Taylor's family came to Washington for the holiday and we were SOOO excited to have them come. We have really been looking forward to it and are so thankful that they decided to come see us. Anyway, so I have spent literally hours looking online for recipes and reading reviews to see which ones are the best. I planned the menu for dinner and was really excited about how it was going to turn out. I should have known that cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time will NEVER turn out perfect....

The first disaster in the kitchen happened with my first attempt at pie crust which was supposed to be "fail proof" and delicious. Well, I made the dough, chilled it, and rolled it out into my pie tins. It looked really good......until about 10 minutes into cooking when it shrunk so far down into the pan that you couldn't have filled it with ANYTHING. Moral of the story?? Experiment with recipes before you prepare them for a special occasion!

Second disaster occured when I was talking and not paying attention to what I was doing while making a pumpkin cheesecake. The recipe called for a 15 oz can of pumpkin, but I apparently thought that it was a good idea to put a 29 oz can in instead. It did turn out okay because I added 2 more egg yolks to help it set up. Lesson learned?? Don't talk and cook at the same time!

Anyway, I could go on all day about things that I did wrong with this dinner, but it all turned out okay in the end. We had turkey, ham, rolls, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, banana cream pie, pumpkin cheesecake, and apple pie. Tay's mom saved the day and made the rolls and stuffing for me. Overall, it worked out well and we all ate A TON!

After the cooking was over, we were able to just hang out and have fun! We weren't able to do a ton of stuff outside because it was a bit cold, but I still had so much fun talking and spending time with them. Here are some pictures in a random order because I have already spent WAY too much time trying to get this blog to work for me...

We went out to eat at a local Mexican restaurant together. It was a lot of fun and delicious! The other picture you're seeing is what I like to call Tay's "TURKEY HANGOVER" aka what he does to get out of the dishes.

So, Taylor and Johnny were wrestling to see who was tougher.....It was a pretty even match if you ask me!

Here are the pictures of our feast! We ate soooo much. I'm sure I gained 10 pounds over this weekend!

Here's Tay's "picked on" face while doing the dishes! But, really, the guys did all of the dishes which was soo great!

Bentley and Sadie LOVED having everybody here. In fact, this morning when Sadie woke up, the first thing she did was run all around the house looking for everybody. She came back into our bedroom looking pretty confused because they had to leave early this morning. You can tell that the dogs miss them already!

So, this is pretty much how Johnny was for 90% of the trip. He was texting his girlfriend all the time. And if he wasn't talking to her, he was talking ABOUT her. It was pretty cute. Nauseating, but cute!!! I kept teasing him, but he's a pretty good sport.

So, that's our Thanksgiving in a nutshell. We had so much fun, but missed all of our family that couldn't be with us. We love everybody and are so thankful for all that we have been blessed with. We have two amazing families, the gospel, and eachother. What more could you ask for?

Recipe Help

So...this year, I was not able to get any time off to go home for Thanksgiving. We were really bummed out, but Tay's parents decided to make my year and come here! We are so excited to see everybody and can't wait for them to get here. However, I have never actually done a Thanksgiving dinner by myself before and I'm a little bit nervous. I need some good recipes for things like stuffing, pies, side dishes, etc. I would really appreciate any help that you can give me with some good family recipes! I know that it's kind of a pain, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE help me out!

Moses Lake

So...here's an update for all of you diligent people who haven't completely given up on me updating the blog :). We have been here in Moses Lake now for a little over 3 weeks and are getting settled in. Our move was pretty amazing with the people that packed and moved all of our stuff. It was very stress free and now we are just working on getting everything unpacked. For those of you that haven't heard the story...we moved into our rental house without even seeing it. I was so scared to see what it would be like, but it is sooo nice! It was definitely a pleasant surprise! We are liking it here so far, but we are still adjusting to being so far away from family. That has definitely been the hardest part. However, on the positive side, we are pretty close to Jared and Marianne and we've been able to spend some time there. It's been really nice. We're heading there for Halloween and I'm soooo excited to see the kids all dressed up. It should be fun!! Our house is still a work in progress, but we got some new furniture and have been decorating a bit. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE our new furniture. We got a new dining room table, new couch, bedset and rug. It's so nice!
I have started my job now and even gotten my first "grown-up" paycheck! I have been really enjoying my job so far. It is a very good company and I work with really great people. I am taking over 600 patients from the provider that recently quit. Don't worry....I just peed my pants a little bit when I heard that! I have to admit that I am losing sleep at night now because I am in charge of my own patients and that scares me sometimes, but I am adjusting and really liking it.
Tay is going to school online and is doing well. I think that he might be going a little "stir crazy" staying at home, but he sure helps me out a lot with everything. He's such a great husband! I can't believe how much he supports and loves me. We had our 5 YEAR ANNIVERSARY on Oct. 16th. I can't believe how fast it's flown by! Here's some pics of our house and other random stuff...

So that's what's been going on with us lately. We miss everybody and hope that all is well! Love you all!

Next Phase!

So....this last month has been more than a little crazy. It's been a whirlwind of traveling for interviews, graduation, board exams, the excruciating wait for my scores and preparing to move from our little home. From a previous post, most of you know the options we were comparing. We have made a decision and signed a contract. We are going to MOSES LAKE, WA of all places. It was an interesting conclusion because that was the only interview that Tay wasn't able to go with me on, but I really loved the clinic and the way that it was organized. It is in a community health clinic with 7 doctors and 8 other PA's. It's a brand new clinic with very nice rooms. The job itself has great hours, a really good benefits package and a good salary. One of the main attractions was the fact that they GUARANTEE student loan repayment! I will be able to be debt free after just 3 years! It's a very large benefit that happens to be tax-free! The community itself is a small place with about 20,000 in the city limits and about 40,000 in the greater area. I was expecting it to be a hole in the wall, but I thought that it was a cool little place. Tay and I will be going there in a couple of weeks so that he can explore and so that we can get the final details worked out. I am scheduled to start the first week in October. We are really excited about this move and feel that the Lord has played a very large part in our decision. Just an example of that is the fact that we are selling our house on the 25th of September without even putting it on the market! It has been such a huge blessing. Of course there are very mixed feelings because we won't be near our families anymore and that makes me more and more sad as time passes, but we do feel like this will be a good move for us. We have been so blessed to be near our families. They are so amazing and we are thankful every day to have been blessed with such great families. Plus, my brother Jared and his family live about an hour away in Kennewick so I will actually be able to spend more time with them now! Tay and I don't know much about Moses Lake, so if anybody does or has any tips for us, let us know!!!