Spring is Finally Here!

Last Friday when we arrived in St. George to see Jarom and Rachel and their family, our eyes were finally opened to springtime! After Hibernating since November, the sun has made us very happy this past week. We love spending time with Jarom Rachel and their family, and this time we got to start and end our trip with them :) it was so sunny and nice there and we loved it! We even got to see their new house!

here are some pictures of their kids listening to their heart  with my stethoscope.

Aside from being in St. George, we loved the week we had in California! I can’t say that we did anything out of the ordinary that I could really talk about, but we had such a good time just relaxing and resting!……. well at least for me!

Hans may have had less time relaxing because he spent half of the week studying and taking the GMAT. He did so well though! He scored 620 which is better than 71% of people who take the test! He has already applied for his Masters at ISU in Pocatello, and now we just have to wait and see what happens :)

Here is what we did all week:

- Played Super Mario World and Smash Brothers on the Wii

- Watched some movies at home and went to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians with family.

- Ate some good food and hung around a bunch of family

- We went shopping a few times, I got some new shirts and we stocked up on some stuff from Costco!

-We spent some good time outside soaking up the sun

- Hans finished reading a book, and I read 2 books!

I’m not a reader at all. The only time I will read is if I find a really good book. We’re talking, amazingly good, because if I can’t get into it, I wont finish it. I never finished the Harry Potter series. The last series I read was the twilight series. I attempted to read a book last summer, but it took me 5 months to finish it.

A lot of people have been recommending The Hunger Games. So I thought “Hey, why not?”. I didn’t even get it at the library, I went and bought it, so I wasn’t going to be very happy if it wasn’t amazing.

I read it in one day! (this was partly because I was on vacation and I couldn’t think of anything better to do)

I really was SO good. I recommend it to everyone. If you want to know more about it come ask me….. and if you live close I’d be happy to let you borrow it if you would like :)

The Hunger Games was so good that Hans went out and bought me the second book, Catching fire. I also read that in one day :)

These books are so good, the third book is coming soon too I think!

Here are some pictures of some trees around Hans’ family’s house in California.

I had never seen a lemon tree before so this was really cool for me!

This is a lemon tree!

I had never seen an olive tree either….. so cool!

This is a leftover olive that went bad… apparently it’s not olive season :)

This is a cool birds nest that was in the olive tree.

Oranges… mmmmm

And grapefruit too!

We were just lucky enough to take some fruit home with us, fresh off the tree!

As you can see, Hans let his facial hair grow out last week :)

 

 

One of the nights, Ivan (Hans’ brother just above him), found a baby duck that had wandered away from it’s parents, it was an interesting experience…

Ivan and Sandy were trying so Hard to get it back to it’s parents.. haha!

After spending all this time in California with so many cool plants, I’ve been wanting to plant my own garden. It sounds so fun to me! I remember the little garden that we used to have when I was little right on the side of our house, and I loved it.

But due to our lack of space, I can’t plant a real garden. So I have to settle with some flowers and a planter box.

Even this will be a dilemma because we aren’t allowed to have anything out by our door… which is the only outside we really have. So for now our planter box is sitting on our bedroom windowsill.

We bought the flower stuff today and I made it our family night activity, faith is like a little seed right?

Well, it was fun for me, I don’t know if it was for him though ;)

Hopefully we can nourish these seeds enough as well as our faith! :)  

Happy Easter Birthday :)

This weekend was a lot of fun!…. At least Sunday was :)

Friday I did homework all night, and Saturday we watched conference and I did more homework then too. I really wanted to finish it all so I didn’t have to do it on Sunday!

I spent some time with Kim and Daryn on Saturday during the priesthood session. We went to the dollar store and bought some things for Easter. I got an Easter basket for Hans and for myself :) and I bought a few dollar store things to fill them will with.

My family always got their baskets from the Easter bunny on their bed or in their bedroom waiting for them on Easter morning. In his family their Easter baskets are hidden and they have to search until they find them. So I hid both of the baskets in our front closet :)

Sunday was my Birthday! We got up and Hans started making breakfast! I started getting ready and my family called and sang Happy Birthday to me :) They told me to open up the package they had sent, so we opened it. and… Easter came in the mail! My mom ( I mean.. the Easter bunny) sent us an Easter basket!

It had some good stuff inside…. it was a great start to a wonderful day!

After that, I told Hans that there may be something else hiding from the Easter bunny and that he should look around for it! I wish I had gotten it on camera, because when I told him that he got really happy and excited… it was cute :) Then he started his search!

Hmmm, I guess I could’ve hid it somewhere less obvious… I think it was still fun for him though :) It then made sense to him why I told him we didn’t need to buy Easter candy the night before. ha

Conference started and I had some fun looking through the basket from my parents. Then Hans got breakfast all set up and ready to eat!

Since we eat at the crossroads a lot, sometimes on Saturdays we get breakfast from there. I for some reason have really liked getting biscuits and gravy in the morning, so lately Hans has gone and gotten breakfast there for me and brought it back to the apartment… yum! So for my birthday breakfast he made me croissants and gravy…. due to our lack of biscuits. we also had eggs and hash browns, it was delicious!

We do have a real table, but for some reason we do everything on our coffee table. It’s kinda like our homework eating, studying, and everything table. It’s also right in front of the T.V.  :)

In between sessions I decided that I wanted to color eggs! but first, I opened presents. I got some way cute stuff from my parents… AKA my mom, I think my dad said he helped out :) I loved them though! Hans got me some cute presents, It was so sweet, I could tell that he really thought them out… love them even more!

We decided to blow out our eggs because then we could use them next year for decoration or something! Plus I just didn’t feel like doing them hard boiled. Hans started blowing them out while I was in the shower and I thought he was going to have a heart attack or something! haha. Later I blew out some more….. it was more difficult than I thought! It’s the dang yoke.. sheesh! haha

Kinda a funny picture…

Here are some pictures of our station all set up

We got an egg marbling kit. did you know that you can add oil to the die and it will make your eggs come out with a cool marbling effect? We thought it was cool….

here are our eggs:

I painted and egg of Hans and he painted an egg of me!

here we are with our eggs! haha

After the last session of conference Hans got right to work on making my birthday cupcakes! We thought that one cake mix wasn’t going to be enough so we bought two… and ended up having a lot of extra cupcakes… haha.

oops I cut of Hans’ head…  then I made fun of his droopy eye in the picture… hehe Sometimes we just have issues with our height difference! I mean come on, I’m on my tippy toes and he is crouching down… and still….

Much better…

I  made the frosting for them and we had bought some cool neon food coloring at the store, so I added the dye to some of the frosting, and the colors turned out so cool!

We frosted the cupcakes together, and it was a lot of fun… and a lot of clean up :) on each cupcake we put a different letter and spelt out Happy Birthday Stephanie (yep that’s me!) I have to say though that they turned out so cute! I loved them… and everyone at the party loved eating them too :)

Here are some pictures of the cupcakes:

Our friend Daryn got together a potluck party with some couples in the lounge for that night. Everyone brought a different part of the meal ( it was spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread), we brought the cake….. or cupcakes. We ate and talked for a while.

This is a picture of me blowing out the candles… and me with my birthday cupcakes!

The rest of the time we played some fun games!  I also took everyone’s blood pressure because I had to finish doing 50 by….  tomorrow ah!

Some people left, and I talked to some of Hans’ family that called, and we had a good rest of the night playing some games!

Here is a picture of everyone:

with our delicious cupcakes

All in all, it was a wonderful Birthday and Easter. My favorite part was the little fun crafty things we did. I really liked dying eggs and frosting the cupcakes. I’m thinking about maybe taking a cake decorating class when we are up at ISU, because I love decorating, crafts, and sweets… the perfect combination!

We are still enjoying the time we have together just us right now, and we love it!

Only about 2 more days of the semester and then we are headed to California to see some family and our new niece Avery! (for those of you from my side.. my sister in law Stephanie just had a baby and they named her Avery.. funny huh?)  We are also going to be able to see Jarom and Rachel and their family in St. George.

We are so excited to have a break.  I think that sickness has decided to come upon me now. congestion, sore throat, and coughing isn’t great, but I’m just grateful it decided to come now instead of in the middle of the semester. I guess we’ll see what fun things await us in California!

It’s Almost April!

It’s been so long!I’ve been meaning to write but you know how life catches up with you sometimes. Also we didn’t have really anything slightly exciting happening for a while. But I’ll give an update!

We have been slowly pushing towards the end of the semester, and in some ways we can’t hardly believe that it will be over next week! I’m starting to get really nervous about change, graduating next Semester and moving on! We have loved this ward so much and all the friends we have made and I am not looking forward to having to get outside my comfort zone, yet again to make friends. I know it is too soon to be worried about, but I’m sure that next semester will go just as fast as this one did, if not faster.

This semester has been hard for us with so much stuff going on, so we are going to be very glad when it is over. I try to not think and dwell on the change that is awaiting us, not so far away. But I do not like moving… I’ve moved a few times in my life, and for those of you who know me well, know that I really don’t like it. I guess there is something I need to learn from it :( We’re probably going to be moving around a good amount in the next 10 years… or the rest of our  life. anyways… moving on…..

Other than doing homework… A lot, we have started to get back into the social life :) There have been some Relief Society activities that I have enjoyed going to, and this last weekend we had another girls night! here are some pictures: (yes when you get married, you can act very crazy too :)

We took a picture of everyone’s rings :)

I took a video of Kim sucking in her pregnant belly…. crazy! Oh I just love her :)

Here is Leann being her crazy self

Here is a group picture

a few funny ones :)

and some more pictures with some friends!

 

 

I know…. A lot of pictures. I like to have pictures to capture fun moments! Hans has also been hanging out with the guys a lot more lately!

He plays ping pong with his friend Luke in the ward. He loves it! They went to a ping pong competition this last week, and loved it. He has also been playing racket ball a lot with his friends lately, and he is lovin that too. I don’t have any pictures of his stuff, because being a guy, he doesn’t take pictures too much of his guy stuff.

This last Saturday  we went to a party for my MA class at my teachers condo. we played some games and it was fun getting to know people in my class more! Then Hans and I drove to Idaho falls to go shopping, of course we didn’t buy much of anything at the mall, but Hans wanted to get my birthday present at the mall so we went, and it was fun. On Saturday night we went to the lounge with Mat and Daryn and hung out for a little while.

On Sunday I was planning on getting caught up on blogging and some other stuff….. but the day just went a little too fast…. or we took a long Sunday nap, those darn Sunday naps! That night we went and played some games with Mat and Daryn and Kim and Brad, we loved spending time with them. it’s just so fun to get together with other couples and play games… and talk… I just love it!

See what I mean about being sad about leaving? :(

Hans got out his guitar and played some songs the other night

When I was writing on our Calendar I asked Hans to draw some flowers on it…. Haha… I just thought this was a funny video.

The finished product:

It looks nice huh? :)

Last night we also had FHE with Sarah and Jaren, and it was a lot of fun :)

Some other good news is, we have both been doing well in our classes! I was very excited to get 100% on my compentencies for drawing blood. I was so nervous that I would have a hard time drawing blood, but I did it!

There are still more tests that await us…… but we’re getting toward the end. YAY!

Random Thoughts

I'm probably going to ramble so you may not want to read this!

We totally missed the whole daylight savings thing on Sunday… oops! I knew it was on Sunday, and so did Hans but for some reason we thought it was Sunday night! We have church at 9:30 so…. I got up at 8 due to the fact that it takes me about an hour+ to get ready in the morning.

So I’m in the shower at what I thought was 8:05 and Hans was sleeping…. I started thinking about daylight savings and I thought that it would probably be a good idea to check if it had happened the night before. So I told Hans to check, and he said “No, I don’t think it is until tonight.” But i told him to check anyways, and he came in and told me that it was actually 9:10 and church started in 20 minutes. Hmmmm. So we rushed around, and we got to church, right before they started passing the sacrament… phew! Hans told me he was proud of me getting ready in 20 minutes. Hahaha, I was proud of me too!

He said “I don’t know what I would do without you, you always remember everything, daylight savings, fast Sunday..” Haha at least I’m good for something :)

He also always asks me where things are, I tell him that he can find them just as well as I can, and he told me “But you’re better at finding things than I am.”  I just thought that was funny because even though we don’t have kids yet, It reminds me of my mom, because everyone always ask mom where everything is. I guess it’s a mom, wife, woman thing!

We don’t have anything really exciting to report on, but as of yesterday, we have been married for 7 months. Now, I know that isn’t long, but since we haven’t been married a year yet, we like to count the months! I feel like as time goes by, our relationship just keeps getting better. We haven’t really hit huge hurdles and mountains of change yet in our relationship ( like children), but I can say that we are both learning things about marriage (and each other) all the time. I know our relationship will grow to be even better as more time passes. We are so happy together! I know that’s mushy, but I warned you about my blabbering!

I got all the classes I needed to graduate next Semester… YAY! One of those classes I got by a miracle… We prayed so hard for that class so our schooling  plan would work, and we were blessed (funny how one class can change a whole 4 year plan). So I’m going to graduate next Semester with Hans (that is if I pass my classes).

Hans is working diligently towards taking the GMAT to be able to get into his masters program at ISU, and he will hopefully take that by the end of this Semester. Then he will be going to school while I finish my internship, take the CMA exam, and work as a Medical Assistant  and we will be able to continue with our plan!

There are about 3-4 weeks left of the Semester and I’m feeling it, we both are. We can’t wait to be done with this Semester and move on to the next one. We’ll see how these weeks go!

Hectic but Fun Filled weeks!

I haven’t written in forever! But, because it is late on Sunday night and I probably won’t be able to write this week, I’m going to give a quick update from the past 2 weeks. We have been so busy.

The weekend before this one (the last one in March) on Friday there was a Relief Society activity and it was really fun. Everyone brought treats, and games, but we just ended up talking the whole time, but with a big group of newly married girls… would you expect anything different? haha. After the activity was over there was a group of girls (including me) that were still hanging around. We started getting out games, when Daryn said, “Lets all pile in the car and get Horkley’s! (for those of you who don’t understand… Horkley’s is a gas station in Rexburg where you can get huge drinks for super cheap). So we all piled into one car… all 8 of us in a 5 seater, turned on the music and did a horkleys run!

After that adventure, we came back to the lounge and played gestures and what if for the rest of the night! It was so fun to get out and have some fun with the girls, laughing until you pees your pants sort of thing…. you know… stuff you can’t do with boys. A girls night out!

Saturday Hans and I just had some lay around the house alone time… coupled with homework. Sunday we went over to Sarah and Jaren’s to play some games. We played Jenga and captured some good videos…

And… guess who it finally fell down on….. haha

A very sad Hans (nice face)

Here is me taking Jaren’s blood pressure for my class! I took both Sarah and Jarens, I have to get 50 done by the end of this month and I’m only at 25!

During this last week we have just been doing the usual! On Wednesday in my clinical, when we were practicing drawing blood on the hand, and someone stuck me right through the vein! It hurt annoyingly and it looked pretty disgusting because it covered half of my hand. It puffed up and then slowly went down and turned into a nasty bruise. I’m going in to do it again today so i’m just hoping a don’t get a bruise again!

This weekend has been crazy! We hung out with Daryn and matt on Friday and played some games. Then on Saturday we went to the ward cookie social, and had dinner with Scott and Leann that night, and watched Nacho Libre! On Saturday we went and played some games and ate cookies with Kim and Brad and Cynthia and Jon, then we came home and had to stay up really late so I could register for classes… I didn’t get all the ones I needed to graduate… but that’s a different story for another time :) and I need to stop worrying about it.

This week looks like another normal hectic week, so I guess we’ll see what happens :)