Once upon a time

Once upon a time I had this brother.  And he went on a mission and I cried.  The end.  Seriously.  You should have seen me.  I was a mess.  But i blame it on exhaustion and hormones because it's not like he's dying.  Every time someone tells me they are from SoCal, I have to know where from and tell them that I have a brother serving in Arcadia!  I'm just so proud.

On another note:  We got like 3 inches of snow today. And not the dry stuff.  This is the real deal folks. Wet. White. And Slippery.  It's sticking like glue and I don't think it's going anywhere.  The first real snow of the winter on January 26, 2012.  Nice one Idaho.  Nice.

School is pretty much kicking my butt.  Speaking of school, I'm sitting on a bench.  And there's this Professor's office down the hall a little ways.  And in the last hour at least 4 people have tried to talk to him.  But he's not there.  In fact, he's never there.  He's like a ghost.

Well, we sat down and figured out about how much we spend a month on NECESSITIES.  I'm not much of a money budgeter-balancer.  I'm more of a money spender.  I don't need to know exactly how much is in my bank account every minute of every day.  If there's a four digit number where it says: CHECKING, i'm good.  So we sit down and figure how much we spend on these things called necessities.  You know, rent, groceries, insurance, etc.  And let me tell ya.  It wasn't pretty.  As if I wasn't stressed enough already!  We're not struggling or anything, we just realized that there's not really a lot of wiggle room.  Which is difficult for me.  I don't like going out and spending a ton of money.  In fact, anything over like $50 makes me cringe.  It's the little things like Taco Bell, and that cute shirt on sale for 5 bucks.  Man. [p.s. the ghost teacher has returned].  This will really be a hard winter for me.  Oh well.......Self control.  I need more pictures........

Farewell!

This is my brother, Parker.

And he is leaving for his MISSION on WEDNESDAY!!

Oh, dear.  This makes me feel very old.

Parker is one of my very best friends.

And this is why:

1. I have known him his whole life, and most of mine.

2. I trained him at Jamba Juice.

3. He is such a great example.

4. He has cool glasses.

5. We have deep conversations.

6. He's taller than me.

I am so proud of him for taking this step in his life, and I know that the Lord will bless him.

I will miss him a whole lot, so long as there are picture of him to look at.

I feel like he's the oldest because he's the first to go on a mission.

He will be such a good missionary!

Farewell, Elder Nielson!

Love you!

PS. I made him a blog.  Go here!

Earphones and Underwear

Now, read this entire post before you...don't read it. haha.  Do you ever do things that really make no sense at all?  Sometimes I do.  I like to listen to music when i'm on the computer.  So pretty much every time i get on my computer, i stick my earphones in.  The thing is, a lot of the time i don't listen to anything.  I just stick the earphones in, and that's it.  I was trying to explain this to Brennen.  This is what I came up with: "It's like going out without any underwear on.  Just makes you uncomfortable."  haha, Ok, so that's not really the best comparison i've ever made, but...it's true.

Past Projects and Pictures

 So a while ago i had some projects that i was doing.  I never had a chance to post them.  So here they are.

 I made these as Christmas gifts for the girls that i visit teach.  I wanted them to have something to remind them that they were loved, even when they didn't feel like it.  I loved this talk in the General Relief Society broadcast.  Click here to read more.

 I guess I'm really into scrapbook-like framing something...it's kind of weird.   But i like it.  On the left is The Family: A Proclamation to the World.

On the right is The Family: Our Proclamation to the World

It's basically something that Brennen and I wrote up for our "Building a Celestial Marriage" class we took that states our beliefs about the family and the plan of happiness.

I found this gem at the dollar store! I love it!

***THANKSGIVING PICTURES***

I did take pictures at thanksgiving, i just haven't posted any yet.  So here they are!! :)

 The boys "played" dominoes for a bit.  They more played with them than played the actual game of dominoes.

Mostly they tried to see who could build the tallest domino tower.

 Besides the turkey, this was my other major contribution to Thanksgiving dinner.

Peeling potatoes for mashed potatoes

 This is my NEW AND IMPROVED daddy!  Doesn't he look great??

He's lost at least 65 pounds!

 This is Connor...

and me.  Woot.

Where are all the pictures of Brennen??

Hmmm......

Christmas Goodies

It's January 8 and I am finally posting about Christmas..yay for me!  Hope it was all good for everyone.  We spent Christmas Eve at my parents house and Christmas day at the Larsen.  We mostly took pictures of what we got, but not a lot of people opening their presents.  Not a lot of Lucy and Jack, unfortunately.  But here were a few of ours.

 Here's an overview of all the goodies we got!

 This was to Brennen from my parents

 Brennen got me a new battery for my laptop (which is AMAZING by the way) and some canisters for flour, sugar, etc.  My parents got us two new baking sheets and Brennen's brothers got him the new COD game.

My awesome brother got us a $25 Jambacard

Brennen's parents got us this Garmin GPS.  It was probably one of the best things we could have gotten because we always use theirs when we go out of town.

This was a gift from me to Brennen.  He really wanted this hat.

I also got him a tackle box.

Got both pairs of earrings from Brennen.   He picked them out all by himself.  Between these and my wedding ring, I trust him to pick out jewelry for me anytime :)

It's always a tradition for my parents to get me a "temple calendar" fro Christmas.  It's really the only thing I actually ask for each year.

My cute new watch!

New shoes for work..

mall gift card from Matthew and Nicki

RoboStir!!! If you've never seen one of these, click here. Gift from Mom and Dad.

Some lovely smelling lotion from Meaghan, my sis-in-law.  The one on the left is my new fave.

Also got a new pea coat and a nice chunk of change!

I also got Brennen a bathrobe.

And this is us with our loot! 

This is the Robostir in action

My parents also got us this nice cheese grater and a dutch oven.

Lastly, this is the gingerbread house that we made at the Tietjen's Christmas party.

Brennen was the mastermind behind the house design, i just held up the pieces as he glued them together :)

Finals Are OVER!!

Ok...So i don't have any finals.  But THEY'RE OVER!! That's all anyone is talking about...That and the 1/2 inch of snow we got yesterday and and how awful the roads are.  But FINALS ARE OVER!  do you know what that means? peace and quiet in the city of Rexburg for two whole weeks.  It will be nice.  Just hoping the locals don't overcompensate for the lack of college students.  Excited for Christmas to come in about a week! Whoop! Still have a lot of shopping to do. And I'm excited to see my little brother go through the temple on Saturday morning!  And could someone please sell us a good car for a good price? Much appreciated.

Cookies/Missionary Moments

COOKIES:
Brennen asked me to make some goodies to take to friends, family, etc. for Christmas.  I probably got a little crazy.  Saturday was my day off of work so i spent the whole day cooking up something scrumptious.

 The ones on the left are pumpkin cookies and the ones on the right are my famous snickerdoodles.

 Chocolate chip ready to go in the oven!

These took the longest to bake.  I almost didn't finish them. 

 This is the result of waiting for cookies that take 20 minutes to bake.

 It's a good thing this guy doesn't like cookie dough.  More for me! :)

YAY. I'm so happy to be making these cookies.

MISSIONARY MOMENT:

The Elder's Quorum  does a "Missionary Moment" every Sunday.  They asked Brennen to do it next week.  So we decided to buy two Book of Mormons and write our testimony in them and send them to our friend, Sister Miller, who is on a mission in St. George.  I decided to go through the whole book and mark my favorite scriptures.  This took me about an HOUR.  I wasn't planning on spending that much time on it, but I'm glad i did.  It was really cool to mark all the scriptures that I really had a testimony about.  And i just hope that whoever gets this Book of Mormon takes the time to read it because I know it's true.