arkansas friends...

As our rainy season was coming to an end (actually, I don't think it really ever ends...) we found this fun friend. We call him "Jorge," named after the frog I dissected in my 8th grade science class (kinda gruesome, i know, but it is all in love) . This time Jorge is still alive. He comes out of our bushes and greets us on our doorstep nightly.




We have both read children's books with fireflys and heard of them, but never seen them until Arkansas. They are magical! As we drive around at night or dusk we see them dancing in fields. Often it looks like someone has strung a line of twinkling christmas lights. We were determined to catch them and even stayed out until midnight one night to do so. I know, we are really boring. The sad part is we never caught one! They light up for like a second, the go black for 10 or so before they light up again. We could see the light, then they would dissappear into the darkness. The next day we were smarter about this and went out at dusk so we could still see them after the glow went out. We both sucessfully caught one! I swear, we are like little kids. People driving by must think we are crazy.




Our other outdoor friends reside in the pond in the back of our complex. We have about 20 small turtles that we will visit on walks. We really enjoy all the friendly creatures of Arkansas. We haven't met the chiggers yet, and are very grateful for that.

Yes, we are still alive, I just haven't been in that bloggin' mood, you know. My friend M.C. said it best when she said if blogging were a sport, it would have to be a winter sport. I guess I am just so distracted by the great weather and other things to want to sit down on my couch and blog.

Our latest adventures included a trip to Memphis to visit Darren, Brittany and cute Jefferson (Colby' brother and family) which was just wonderful. It was so fun to see you guys and spend the fourth with you. I left from Memphis and flew to California to spend the week with my family at Lake Havasu. The vacation was fabulous, but I missed my other half who was staying home being a grown-up and working. It was one of the few vacations in life where I was just as excited (if not more so) to return home as I was to get to my vacation destination! The biggest reason I haven't posted abotu this yet besides the "not being into blogging right now" issue, is that I don't have a single picture from Havasu. That is so unlike me and it is killing me. Ha. I took TONS of pics, but they were all on my parent's nice camera. They haven't had a chance to send them.

Well, there you have it. I know you were all worried. We are still alive and well.

the claytons

Today one of my best friends, Jessica, is getting mariied in Utah and I am sitting here in Arkansas. I wish so badly that I could be there! I love you Jess and hope this is such a special day for you and Adam; I know it will be. You will look gorgeous, I am sure. Love you!!

K I S S

Colby met these guys (well half of them)

When they weren't wearing any of this

Check it out! Weird, huh?

never been a morning person

Thomas Edison once said, "you can often gauge a man's ambition by whether he hates his alarm clock or considers it his best friend." Well, I definately fall in the "Hate his alarm clock" category, but I have seen/heard of some pretty ingenioius alarm clocks. Found these today--maybe I should invest in one, or all :-/

"This alarm clock doesn’t just make noise, it breaks the snooze-button habit: after the first snooze period, Clocky rolls off the nightstand and runs away."

"As soon as you can assemble the four puzzle pieces that are popped up into the air at your predesignated time, the thing will finally shut up. That should be just enough commotion to assure that you won't go drifting back into la-la land."



"The Flying Alarm Clock wakes you up with a loud shrieking alarm coupled with a little propeller-driven key that leaps off your nightstand. To turn off the horrible racket, you have to get out of bed and retrieve the key."



My roommates used to have to suffer through my "inablitity to hear my alarm clock and actually get up" mornings and would joke about buying one of these. We never knew if they were actually real. Well folks, they are.

A year ago today

I constantly find myself reminiscing about the wonderful trip I had to Europe last summer. Today I was curious about what I was doing a year ago, so I pulled out my journal. The entry I found came from one of the most memorable days of the trip;memorable because I had never been so scared in my life. This was the night Rachelle and I traveled into Paris at night to see the Eiffel Tower and Paris Opera house lit up. We saw the lights of each, but missed the RER train back to our tram which took us to our hotel. After taking a different route, waiting for a shuttle that didn't take us back, and hitching a ride with complete strangers at 2 in the morning, we made it to our hotel safely. {whole story here}

All for this picture...

Happy Birthday to me!

...a few months late. :)

For my birthday (way back in August) my parents gave me this wonderful thing...


I was dying to put it on my laptop and start using it, but my laptop has been ridiculously slow. I wanted to wait until I could wipe everything off my little Dell computer and start over. Well today is that blessed day and Lightroom was one of the first programs installed on it.

Dear Humidity,

Please go away. We don't like you very much.

yours truly,

Katie

i'm obsessed

seriously, I just listened to this about 10 times--in a row--see,

I'm obsessed,

but can you blame me?
It's beautiful.




If only I could find a good, inexpensive {free would be fabulous} piano so I could start playing again!

Where we live...aka our house/apartment Part 1

We have had several people wanting to see pictures of our Apartment and for some time we have been planning on posting pictures but now over 4 months since we moved in we finally going to post some. This will be a mult-part post made over a few days so keep checking back to see the rest of our place!

Just to give everyone a reference point this is what you walk into from the front door. Through the window you can see the fireplace.

This is the view of the kitchen from just inside the front doorstep. The door on the left goes out to our patio where in addition to our BBQ Grill there is also another door that goes into the master bedroom. We were glad that there is a bar in this place after all the time and effort we put into making those bar stools for our apartment back in Provo.






Here is just one more picture of our kitchen. We love the granite counter tops, black appliances, and the large area especially in comparison to our student apartment.


This is kind of a bland picture but you can see part of the kitchen but also a portion of the living room.











Here is our dining room. We love the table and chairs that we got from Katie's parents and the windows! There is so much light in our living room because of all the windows; we rarely need to turn on the lights. We have also been growing our own Italian herbs as you can see by some of the pots on the partial wall (Just out the window is Katie's new bike...I am sure she will blog about it in the future).






This picture was taken from our dining area and the hallway leads into all the other rooms. Straight ahead is the office area (with the chair) and the door with the towel on it is the laundry and utility room. Left before the office is the master bedroom entry and a right turn after the entryway is the guest bedroom (YES there is an extra bed in there for whoever wants to come visit).




This post is for my brother Kellen. He had this leather print of the San Diego Temple made for us on his mission. This is right outside the guestroom door. The other door that you see is the coat closet.
Also since we were just in Provo for graduation I wanted to post this picture. I got home from work one night and Katie had already framed them. It is still hard to believe that we have both finished with Bachelors degrees.

This is it for now but stay tuned as I am sure that Katie will be posting more pictures of our place.

The Rest of our Church Site Visits

Here is the rest of the Church sites that we were able to visit. Having never been to these places myself I had no idea what to expect. This is certainly a spirit about these areas and many of them seemed different than I have always imagined after all these years of hearing about them.

So we walked into the visitors center and I kept thinking that it was such a weird design for a building. I kept thinking that we would look at some pictures and hear about the history and then walk down the street and see the jail. It took me until I was sitting there reading about the visitors center to realize that the visitors center is actual built around the jail!


This is a replica of the Liberty jail. It was made from the original rock and it is cut away on the back side so that you can see the thickness of the walls and how it is laid out inside.


This is the front door (The real one is in the RLDS Temple).
Joseph Smith is the feet you see on the left side of the picture. It was such a small amount of space...about the size of the key on the basketball court and the ceiling was too short for anyone to stand up. Needless to say very uncomfortable

Far West is literally in the middle of nowhere! I couldn't help but think about what this area would look like today if the Saints had never left. This site is just off the road and its cut out of some fields. Across the street is a Community of Christ chapel.

This is the monument at Far West, unfortunately the top of it is cut off.

Each of the four corner stones are covered with a glass case and they each are dedicated to something different (lower priesthood, higher priesthood, etc).

Our Journey to the New Jerusalem

Over Memorial Day weekend Katie and I decided to take an extra day off and have a 4-day weekend up in Kansas City. I am sure Katie will blog about all the details and inform everyone what exactly we did but I wanted to post some pictures of the Church history sites that we were able to visit. Kansas City is only like a 3-hour drive from NW Arkansas and just outside Kansas City is Independence Missouri, Liberty Missouri, and Far West. We started with Independence. I will spare most of the details and make this more of a photo documentary. :)



This is the LDS Visitors Center. It is exactly opposite the Community of Christ (RLDS) Temple. They have several artifacts and other information about the area. Did you know that there are 25 different "break-offs" from the church restored by Joseph Smith here?

This is where 63 acres of land was dedicated for the Saints to settle and build a temple. Now only 20 is owned by the LDS Church. In the background is the "assembly hall" build by the RLDS in the 50's or 60's. It holds almost 6000 people. Below is their seal on the side.


Yet another break off from the LDS Church. Note the date it was restored. There were so many similarities to the number of various religious groups that claimed this area to be important as with the various faiths that claim Israel today.
Here is the Community of Christ Temple dedicated in 1994. It was closed while we were here at the visitors center but I convinced Katie to let me drive back the next day to do a self guided tour. (She was very reluctant)



This is from the center of the RLDS Temple looking up into the ceiling. To get inside we actually had to walk around the outside of the temple in this snail shape and angle.

This is from the balcony and shows the organ and pulpit down in the front.


This is the biggest smile that I could get out of Katie. Let's just say she was a real trooper for coming inside with me but she wasn't happy to be there. They had rooms were we couldn't take pictures where they had everything from men and women giving blessings, the original oil paintings of Emma and Joseph from Emma after her death, the original Liberty Jail door, and pictures of their 12 apostles, presiding bishopric, and first presidency.

This is from the bottom back. Just above Katie's head are translation booths. They have members in 50 countries and so they need to translate the services into different languages.

All in all it was a very interesting experience. It is amazing how close to the truth many people are but as the years pass by they is a greater and greater divide between truth and philosophies of man.

it's gonna be a busy week

and here's why:

2 hour season finale

2 hour season premiere

2 night finale

and there's the line-up, folks.

ok, so our lives don't really revolve around tv, but we sure do enjoy our shows.

today

this was supposed to arrive in the mail:



and hence these were the texts I received today while Colby was at work:

*Did my bike come today? I love you.

*Congrats, you are done with work! Enjoy your afternoon. Xoxo.

(sent at 2:02, I was off at 2:00. I think someone was watching the clock to see when I was off so I could check the MAIL!!)

*Hey could you also make sure to check the mail and see if my bike came slash pick it up?! Thank you so much.

(sent at 2:09. Good thing he sent me a text reminder ;) just in case the other hints and words from the night before and this morning were not enough.)

*Anything?

(sent at 2:39, minutes after I actually got home.)

*My reply: The mail doesn't come this early. Sorry
*C: Oh my heart started racing. Shoot.

*Anything??? You are killing me.

(sent at 3:38)

results: I checked the mail at 4:00 and found the package slip to go pick it up at the post office. I went and picked it up, payed the extra $30 postage that wasn't charged at the other end, and brought it home. Colby is currently assembling his beaut. I am sure pics of his outings with it will come. I have a happy, happy hubby

I squeezed out some of my creative juices

and came up with these ideas/projects for our seaside themed guest bathroom:


close-ups:

{sand dollar from family trip to Cancun}

I know these aren't a-maz-ing...but, considering I have spent the last 4 years of my life studying business, I think I did pretty well on pulling out my creative side. It was fun to do and great to have complete! I think they are a nice finishing touch to our bathroom that has been sitting completely bare. Colby mentioned today that it doesn't echo in there anymore. ha.

We did it!

I know this seems late, considering we actually finished school back in December, but we made it OFFICIAL by going back to Provo last week end to walk in the graduation ceremony. It was so fun to be able to graduate in the same school as my husband. Colby graduated in Business Management: Finance, I graduated in Business Management: Marketing. I even moved up in the alphabet...J to H. The best part of it all was being able to see family! Both the Jergensen and Heiner families were there to support us. Thanks!

Easter

I love celebrating holidays, and Easter is no different. I love the significance of each (the resurrection of our Savior) but also the festivities of them. Because I have younger siblings, holidays are always fun because we have always had a child who "still believes" {in the Easter bunny, Santa, etc.} so we take the extra effort to make things exciting for them. Now that Colby and I are on our own, we aren't with little ones who still struggle to fall asleep due to excitement of the Easter bunny's visit. Not ready to give up the traditions, the Easter bunny still came. ;) After setting up a small egg hunt, I found out Colby had never had an egg hunt growing up and it was fun to see his child side come out as he search for 12 candy filled eggs. You would have thought they had a hundred dollars each in them seeing the way he searched for them.





checking the light fixture for the last two. Nope. Not there. {try behind the closed blinds:) }