Christmas Decorations

I just love Christmas lights. Coming home each evening to the Christmas tree all lit up and the house lights on is one of my favorite things! I haven't invested much in Christmas decorations since we got married, mainly because I have no idea what our living situation will be from year to year, but I try my best with what I do have :)

Here is Taylor putting lights up outside. If you ask Taylor he will tell you that he risked his life putting those lights up! Ha. I forgot to take a picture of the outside but you can see my post here from last year and it's the same.

A few decorations on our small table.

And the tree! I really love colored lights on trees and lots of random ornaments that have special meanings, that was how our tree was growing up and I always loved it. We can't wait for this week to be over and head back south to see family! See many of you very soon :)

Better late than never...

I never got around to posting about our lives before Thanksgiving, or really much about the last couples months (sorry about that!), so this is what we had been up to prior to Thanksgiving...

I voted. It was my first time to go to the actual poles since last time I voted I was in college and voted absentee.

We played golf... in November... in Illinois. I don't know if I ever thought that would happen. It was 65 and sunny a couple weeks ago and the perfect day for golf. We played a course about an hour and a half away and which is actually one of the nicest public courses in the state. Since it was late in the season they had VERY reduced rates so our budget could actually handle the cost! Ha. It was a great day and a beautiful course.

We spent the weekend in Chicago to visit some friends. Brittany and Drew recently moved to England and were in the area for the weekend at a conference. It was fun to catch up with them!

For the actual Thanksgiving holiday we spent time with my family in Oklahoma. It was fun to see grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. I look off Wednesday and we headed to Oklahoma for the Carrie Underwood concert! We got my sister tickets for her birthday and it was so much fun.

Thursday we delivered food to some needy families in the area and that was a real blessing. I look forward to doing that again in the future! That evening we had a wonderful thanksgiving meal with our family friends and then played games that evening. I even went Black Friday shopping, which I had never done before. I'm not sure I'll be doing that every year, but it sure was fun :)

Friday and Saturday we spent time with both sides of my family eating a lot of turkey, stuffing, casseroles, and even smoked ribs and sausage with baked beans (Taylor said that was his kind of Thanksgiving!). It was a wonderful weekend and we can't wait to be back for Christmas!

Thankful

Today I am thankful for Taylor who loves me always, our families who have always supported us no matter what, our jobs and the ability to do what we enjoy, friends who make us laugh and love us, and most importantly a Savior who loves me more than I will ever understand or deserve. 

Weekend Updates

Since I didn't post about our trip to OK last weekend, I figured I would just combine this and last weekend all in one post! Last weekend, in addition to celebrating Keeley's birthday, we also ran in the Tulsa Run. The Tulsa Run is a tradition that Taylor's family has been doing for a while, so during college some of my friends started running it as well and it has just become a yearly tradition now.

My mom, dad, Taylor's brother and SIL, and my myself all did the 5K. It was a lot of fun to run with my mom, who I should say ran the whole thing! Go Mom! 

My mom's company recently moved their offices to downtown so after we finished the race my mom, dad, and I went up to her office and drank coffee to warm up for a few minutes. It was so cold that morning! The view of the finish line was perfect.

Once Taylor, his dad, and his mom, who all ran the 15k, were close to the finish we headed back to the street to watched them finish. After the race we went to eat at Los Cabos, which was delicious! After lunch we headed back to my parents house and had some family over to celebrate Keeley's birthday. Sunday we got up and made the trip back home. It was a wonderful weekend!

This past week we had two notable highlights: Halloween and a new coffee maker. I know that the first one probably sounds more exciting, but I can't tell you how happy our new coffee maker makes Taylor! Ha. We haven't been happy with our coffee maker for awhile so we finally broke down and decided to buy a Keurig. And the verdict? It's awesome! Taylor just gets so happy every time he makes coffee :) So y'all come visit now and let us make you your own personal cup of coffee!

Wednesday Laine and Andrew came over for dinner and Laine and I handed out candy. It's always so fun to see how everyone is dressed! This year the most memorable costumes were a DJ with light up glasses (really cool!), Psy from the Gangnam Style craze (and he looked JUST like him), and a kid who just had a huge paper bag on that said "Can I have candy?" Ha. At least he was honest. This weekend has been pretty chill for us. It's getting pretty cold here now so that limits what our options are. I see many movies in our future the next few months :) Hope y'all had a great weekend!

Happy Birthday Keeley!

Today is my little, yet taller, sister Keeley's birthday! We got to spend the weekend back in Oklahoma celebrating her birthday and it was a wonderful weekend. We love you Keeley and hope you had a perfect birthday. We are already looking forward to the Carrie Underwood concert next month :)

Since my last post...

Since my last post we have been playing a lot of golf since it's the end of the season.

During my trip to Texas in September I got to see the Endeavor Space Shuttle fly through Houston. That was pretty exciting!

I also visited Allen High School which has that new $60 million football stadium, at a HIGH SCHOOL! It was crazy. I felt like I was on a college campus.

This is random but one day we counted a bunch of change Taylor had collect in his car over the last couple YEARS and found over $100!

And more golf...

We made a trip a couple weeks ago to Yoder's Kitchen, our favorite restaurant in the area. It's about 45 minutes away so we always have to plan trips down there, but I love Arthur the little town it's in. I've talked about it before, but Arthur is one of the largest Amish communities in this area of the country.

I am coming to the end of travel season at work (where I visit high schools and attend college fairs) and I can't wait. All my territory is less than an hour and a half away so I always leave in the morning and come home at night, which is nice, but leaving at 6:45 or 7 (a couple times 6!) each morning is making me very tired.

We also went to the circus this weekend which was a lot of fun!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Happy Birthday Mom!

First, Yes I'm still alive. The last month has been really busy with school, a two week work trip, and just life in general so I haven't made much time to blog. Sorry about that!

Second, I wanted to say Happy Birthday to my mom! I am lucky to have a mom that is so caring and supportive of everything I do. I love you mom!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Glacier National Park 2012

The week before last, Taylor and I spent the week at Glacier National Park in Montana with all of his family (including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins!). There were about 30 of us all together and it was so much fun! We forgot to take our camera (I know, how is that possible on vacation?), so I just used my phone and didn't always have it with me. Everyone else in the family took tons of photos though so I 'm just planning on getting a CD copy for them :) Here are a few photos I had on my phone...

 

Ready to head to Kalispell! 

Outside the main house. Here is a link to where we stayed!

 

View at the end of our first hike!

 

We went to Canada one day and went canoeing on Lake Cameron.

 We saw bears!

 This one was right outside our car!

  

Start of the Highline Trail we did one day. It's 12 miles total and you are basically walking along the edge of the mountains!

 Walking right along the edge...

 

We stopped for lunch and this was the view.

After 12 miles completed!

 Julia and Taylor went fishing one day!

 There were 2 grizzly bears in that valley! I was happy to be that far away.

 Pretty lake view along the Road to the Sun Road.

 The road up the mountain was one way at one point so you had to stop and wait for the on coming traffic to clear.

 More traffic but just more time to enjoy the views...

 

Funny group photo!

We had such a great time! I would highly encourge everyone to visit this part of the country at some point. It is absolutely beautiful everywhere you look! Have a great weekend :)

The Never Ending Headache

For the last MONTH (yes, month) Taylor and I have been dealing with a very large headache in our house, and it looks like this...

A couple weeks ago we noticed our fridge not getting very cold. We thought the door had just been coming open so we focused on making sure it was shut and then we left for vacation. Well, we soon found out that was not the issue! When we got back from vacation we noticed a lot of our food (which should have been fine) had gone bad. And I mean really bad.

Needless to say, we decided it was time to call and have the fridge serviced. The headache started by trying to have someone come out and service the fridge. We have a company in town who "guarantees" same day service if you can before noon and prides themselves on excellent customer service. Taylor placed our request at 9:30 and by 11 we had still not heard back. Then he called at 1, and 2, and 4, and 5 and we were told every time that some would be there between 3 and 6. Well, no one came. We had to call the emergency number and were going to be charged extra (those of you who know me can just imagine how upset I was at this point) until the technician showed up and said that he found out our request which had been "lost" and he would only charge us the normal rate. That was nice to hear, but I had a hard time believing the request was lost when Taylor had called 5 times that day!! We found out what was wrong on Friday night (oh yeah, we had to sit around our house on Friday until about 9pm before they showed up!) and were told they couldn't give us an estimation until Monday. Lucky for us, our landlord had left a small fridge in the garage when she left so we have been using that. It just doesn't fit anything so grocery shopping is very tricky.

Then, another headache occurred. Once the technician left we noticed that the linoleum in our kitchen floor had been ripped when he moved the fridge back into place! Ugh. So we called him back and he gave us the e-mail address to send in the complaint. Luckily I called the next morning about my e-mail and our floor was fixed in the next two days.

Then more headache: the part we needed was on back order by Samsung for 2-4 weeks!! Seriously, isn't that ridiculous? Maybe they should make better lasting products. Our landlord is going to pay for the fix and seems to feel really bad about the situation, which is nice, but using the tiny fridge has been a real hassle the last couple weeks. So last Friday, we got a call that the part had come in early (yay, we thought!) and they would be out that afternoon to fix it. The technician came, stayed about 2 minutes changing the part, charged a crazy stupid fee for being there 2 minutes, and then left. We thought that would be end of the headache but it wasn't! We went and played golf that evening and in the 5 hours we were out, the fridge has only cooled 2 degrees. We called the next morning and told them about the issue. The company said a technician would not come out until we manually defrosted the fridge which meant we lost all our freezer food (which actually works!) and left it unplugged for 24 hours. Can you guess what happened after 24 hours? We plugged it back in and nothing was different. O-M-G. I was so mad.

Finally the technician came back out last week and told us that it could be the fan (seriously, could?) so he ordered that part. Taylor was pretty upset and went to the store to talk with a manager to make sure they understood how terrible the situation was. Once the fan came in the technician came back out and replaced the part. Well, guess what? He ordered the wrong part, the one ordered did not fixed the problem, and we are now waiting on a new part. The technician came back out today and put in the new fan, but told us that he thinks the control board he installed previously may be bad. (OMG!) Right when he left I called the service department and left a message for a supervisor to call me. They called me back this morning and Taylor is currently meeting with a supervisor at our house to determine if anything is wrong. As of today, it was been over 4 weeks since our first service. I am trying very hard to not freak out, but I'm not doing the best job. So that is our never ending headache during the last month. The only good thing I can say about this situation is that we are thankful we are only renting and our landlord is being very understanding about the situation and is taking caring of paying for the problem.

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary to my parents! They are celebrating 30 years of marriage today :) What a great example of how special marriage can be!

Love you both!

John Deere Classic

Last weekend was a weekend of golf in our house! We started out by playing a round Friday afternoon and Taylor was very happy as you can tell :) We got a deal at the course that included a cart so it was nice to not walk in the heat.

I also need to make it known that I almost beat Taylor on the back 9! He shot a 38 and I shot a 39! Now I won't tell you what I shot on the front and I'm sure this will not happen again, so I plan on enjoying my almost victory for a very long time. Ha!

On Saturday our golf weekend continued when we headed over to Silvis, IL to watch the John Deere Classic. It's just about 2.5 hours west of us so it was a great day trip. We had planned on buying student tickets once we got there, but as were riding the shuttle over to the course a woman on the bus said she had extra tickets if anyone wanted them. We ended up paying only $5 for our tickets and as a bonus, these tickets were extra sponsor tickets so we had access to the sponsor tent all day! How cool? They had free snacks and pop/water/Gatorade we could take. It was really great.

Taylor enjoying the free stuff and talking with our fridge technician (post coming soon!)

We got there around 9:30am and followed Camillo Villegas and Nick Watney for a few holes before Steve Stricker teed off around noon. Stricker graduated from UIUC and has a huge following in this area so it was fun to follow him all day. Plus, Saturday was the day he made his big charge on the back 9 which was so exciting to watch. Since this tournament didn't have a lot of the "big players" you could get right next to the pros as they were teeing off or if they hit a bad shot in the rough (which Stricker did a couple times and we got to stand right next to him). After the round we were sweaty and tired so we just stopped by a Subway to grab dinner on the drive home. It was a such a fun day and we plan on attending again in the years to come!

Sunday we went to church and came home to watch the final day of the tournament and do laundry. Sadly, Stricker didn't win but it was fun to watch the playoff and just do nothing at home after a couple hot and tiring days. Hope y'all are having a great week!