Sunday, February 16, 2014

December 2013/ January 2014

We finished our first semester in Idaho. David made it through chemistry and his other multiple difficult fun classes. And then we wandered down to Panaca and stayed there for a week. And then we went farther south to Henderson and stayed there almost a week. And then we wandered back on up to Rexburg to start another semester. It was so lovely to relax and play with family. We managed to stop in and see all of our siblings and grandparents up and down the I-15. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to get pictures with everyone. 

 Before we left Rexburg: Snow, snow everywhere!

We didn't get a tree, again, but the good ol' Charlie Brown tree worked just great, again! Thanks Mom (connie) for handing that over to me a few years ago.
             

 Pictures from Panaca:
 This one picture deserves a full on story. Suffice it to say that David and Preston could not call it quits on the one-ups, and this is how it ended-- locked out! (Also, please check out David's on trend style of pants tucked in to boots. ha!)




Annual ice-fishin' trip where lil' Miss caught her first fish!

I thought for sure I would win this thing as I had two fish out before any of the men hooked anything. But then I had a whole lot of nothing til' the end, and by then it was too late. Papa and David: 9  Giulia: 4.  I don't remember what everybody else got. I think Zach got up to 5. (I do know that I did not come in last. But I won't mention names.)


Family Pictures!

Not many people can say that they seriously LOVE their inlaws. I am one lucky girl.





Spotlighting


Catchin' cats! (We weren't there for this, but David did help P set up his traps so we were pretty excited to see these pictures. Ch has a bobcat and P has a fox)


We left P-town on Sunday and headed over to Cedar City to listen to Ryan's homecoming address! It was great because we were able to catch all of the Robbins in one place. He talked about being truly converted to the Gospel. It was a great talk.
After the homecoming party we headed to Henderson where we played with some of my family and whoever from the Robbins that we could. Cough cough, no pictures. We were reallllly hoping that Shelly would have baby #4 while we there. Ah well. Also, a couple hundo later, David was able to replace the exhaust manifold on the jeep that busted on our way down. We're glad it decided to break when we were in Henderson so David had access to Grandpa's shop and tools to fix it himself.

The day before we left Nevada we stole Felicia and the kiddos from her inlaws and spent the afternoon at Chicken Shack, Ethel M's, and the airport runway watching planes take off and land.
It was such a lovely afternoon! Good company and beautiful weather! I think it was in the 60's that day. It felt so nice and got us excited about spring up north.




We then started the journey back north. We stayed at Grandpa and Grandma Young's for the evening and Jenette got to come over and hang out. The next morning we went to Ikea- our first time! And then we visited with Grandmama for a bit.
By that evening we found ourselves in Logan, UT playing with this sweet thing.

It was close to her birthday and we went to the Elk Reserve to celebrate.


I've never been that close to an elk before. Very cool!  The elk are free to come and go as they please. This is just a place for them to winter so they don't go down the canyon and get hit by a car or destroy lawns, meet a tragic end, etc. One of the elk they had tagged came in from Jackson, WY. I never realized that these guys move so far!

Big horsies!

This was a poster in the window of the visitor's center. It made me giggle! It says, "Catch 'em, keep 'em. Well, maybe it's little more complicated than that, but research shows that people who fish are more successful in relationships. Fishing licenses make great holiday gifts!" Harharhar.

We made it back to Rexburg and started the winter semester two days later. We're both just under 12 credits- it's our off semester and we grabbed as many classes as we could. It's nice not being as stressed and busy as last semester when we were both taking 15 credits. We're so not stressed that we've had time to finally put the trim up around the hall closet doors, and we also put up the decorative trim around my cute little command center. 
And we've had time to decorate a little. This little house is becoming our home.

And baby Wyatt finally arrived! This is nephew #6 for us. We can't wait to meet him!

That pretty much covers us through January. 
Happy New Year! and Happy 4 year anniversary! 
2013 was a good year filled with a lot of highs and enough lows to keep us balanced. :) I don't really intend to make our lives look rosy and perfect, but I just realized that I do tend to only write about the fun things that we did/happened. I'm a good forgetter and easily forget about the fun times we had if I don't have pictures of it. I'm also good at forgetting the reasons why I get upset- this is great for David. ;) And pictures don't generally get taken at particularly sad moments. And what I have pictures of is generally what I put on here in order for us to keep a family photo album. So, keep in mind all five of you readers out there: our life isn't rosy all the time, nor some of the time. It's full of early mornings and late nights working (on school or at work) and worrying about x,y,z. But at the end of the day, we choose to be happy. And that's what we'll continue to do and share here: happiness. 
Bring on 2014!

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

The Four P's

I just finished a closed captioning video from 2011 by Nora Nyland, a dietetics professor at BYU. She talked about living worthy of the Savior's recommendation, as He is our advocate with the Father. She suggested four things that can help us develop the characteristics we need to by worthy of His recommendation- the Four P's.
  1. A Sense of Purpose. More specifically, an eternal sense of purpose. We have to know where we want to go to get on and stay on the correct path. Because of the restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith, we know that we are literal spirit children of our Heavenly Father, and as such we each have a divine nature and destiny. That divine destiny is to return to the presence of God and to become like him. Having an accurate sense of purpose is fundamental to making the best decisions and staying the course, no matter how difficult it becomes. Knowing we are children of Deity with divine potential ought to give us some staying power when the strait and narrow path gets steeper, rockier, and more obscure than we might like.
  2. The Ability to Plan. Planning is how we affect the future rather than just be affected by it. "In nothing does man come closer to God-like activity than in planning." In Moses 6:62 the Father states: "I say unto you: This is the plan of salvation unto all men, through the blood of mine only Begotten." If your plans keep you headed in the right direction, it's unlikely that you'll make any big mistakes.
  3. Maintain Perspective. With physical objects, we're pretty comfortable with the idea that something can remain constant while our view changes. We might have an easier time in life if we could apply that same understanding to the non-physical world, to what we perceive emotionally, interpersonally, and spiritually. Compared to how they really are, our problems, challenges, interactions, and even decisions sometimes appear too large or too small to us. This proportion distortion can be dangerous to our spiritual health. It can cause us to become discouraged or angry enough to want to give up our efforts at living righteously or it can cause us to be cavalier about some of our choices and fail to give them proper attention. You know that you will make mistakes in your life. Viewing your life with an eternal perspective helps with the final P-
  4. Perseverance. Perseverance must be important, or we wouldn't have so many scriptures admonishing us to endure to the end. None of them say, "slide to the end" or "sail to the end," so that must mean our Father recognizes it isn't easy to do all that is required of us. But what a wonderful reward awaits if we do. [D&C 14:7] "And, if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of God." A great example of a perseverant attitude is found in Paul in Phillippians 3:13, "But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Our perseverance leads us to the greatest of all the gifts of God.

Monday, February 3, 2014

November 2013

Playing catch up 'round here.
 We left off at David's birthday. 
We celebrated by actually going out to eat. This is a rare event indeed. We dined at The Hickory here in town. It was tasty and affordable.
He requested a pizookie, or fruit pizza, instead of a cake or what have you, and I think it turned out darling!
We ate that whole thing within a matter of days. Two and a half to be precise. We are not ashamed. ;)

We decided to do our own little Thanksgiving dinner, just the two of us. 1) driving somewhere to meet family sounded exhausting. 2) We could have gone to the Erickson's and crashed their party, but I really wanted to try cooking a full-out thanksgiving spread on my own for the first time. 3) I wanted to make it a paleo meal. IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!!!!
As I made messes in the kitchen David one-cut his hair super short; it's never been that short before, and two- tried to keep up with cleaning all the dishes I was dirtying as I cooked. It was a great team effort.  After we barely even made a dent in all that food, we had some friends over for dessert. I made these lemon bars, and they are the best lemon bars I've ever had. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, and these are more lemony/citrus than sweet. Did I mention no sugar and no flour? Score! Try it out!

Part of our preparations for going home for the two-week Christmas break was boiling our deer heads so we could bleach them out. This was David's Tuesdays project. It takes a while to boil the head and then peel and clean out everything. And we had two heads to get done. I say "we". David did all work. Tuesdays I'm gone all day.

And this just makes me giggle.
On one side of the counter we have the wildlife biologist student's project, and on the other side of the counter is the horticulture student's bonsai (and a coconut, haha).

Other than David's birthday and Thanksgiving, November flew by as we hunkered down for the end of the semester rush.