Washington or Bust!

So! Mark and I spent our summer '08 in Richland Washington on internships. We packed up our house, packed the car, and said goodbye to Lafayette as we headed to Mark's Parents house. :o)

(yes, this is kinnda embarrassing that there is a box of tampons right in this picture, but this demonstrates why Mark likes to drive so much. He doesn't understand how I can have all these things down by my feet :o) so every time that we would switch driving, he would clean out the bottom feet place, which I REALLY appreciated...and then I would manage to mess it up again before we would switch back! I have decided though, that its not necessarily my fault that things always get messy when I am near them... who am I to withstand that inevitable force of entropy?? See? Not my fault! Law of nature... ;o) )Here we are at Mark's Parents house!! We got to stay there for a bit and visit. It was really nice to see them:o) We tried to get up one morning to drive becky to school..but we were waaay to tired. :o( I don't think I have ever seen mark so delirious, but then again, I don't wake him up very much. Come to think of it, i don't EVER think I have woken mark up, its ALWAYS the other way around! Waking people up=no fun i have decided. :o) Anyway, we were really, REALLY tired from packing (mostly mark since he carried all the heavy stuff, poor-poor mark!) but we DID manage to tell her that we loved her before she went to seminary :o) Mark's dad gave him a really nice blessing that helped us to be brave leaving IN for the summer :-D


And thar she be! The open road!

We drove, and drove, and drove. And drove. Our plan was to drive straight through the night and switch drivers. This was frustrated by the fact that we never REALLY decided we were doing that or not...so I felt bad for sleeping while mark was driving...so when it came around to be MY turn to drive...i was REEEEEEALLY tired. Oops! We ended up stopping for 3 hours at 1:00 in the morning at a truck some place between here and Salt Lake for a little pit stop, and then we got back to driving till we got to Salt Lake!

We stayed one day with Marks Aunt and family and saw Michael and Lindsey (and witnessed when she told the family that she was going to have a baby), and then we stayed another day with Auntie Shaun and their family and got to see the twins and it was really nice to see them. By really nice i mean WONDERFUL!!!! :-D We also found out that Aunt Shaun was coming up to the Richland area, and that we would be able to see her and everyone AGAIN before the summer was over! WHO-RAY!!


Another pit stop. Mark had never been to Sonic before. (Or i think only once, in NM). While we were there, I thought we were going to be eaten alive by the seagulls. I was throwing them crackers out the window and they were swarming the car. :-) Pretty much, i rolled down the window a crack, tossed the goods, and then rolled up the window and yelled "Run away Mark! Run away!!" :o) It was pretty fun.

Here we are getting car crazy! I don't know if you can get cabin fever or not...but look! Mark let his beard grow the WHOLE TIME we were driving across!! Let me explain why this is such a big deal: I love marks beard. Every vacation, he lets it grow for me :o) then, when we have to go to school, or work, or the temple, ....pretty much the real world... he shaves it off again :o) This means that whenever we get to see Marks parents, or the people where he grew up, we are on vacation, and he lets his beard grow, and his family always gives him grief about it. :o) They think he looks scraggly. I think he looks like a leprechaun.
Here is us on the top of a "mountain" in Oregon, pointing towards the Washington boarder :o) We are a few hours away!!
The Washington state line!! ...22 miles to go....
Tri-Cities!! We made it!!!

It is important to note here that Mark got us across the United Stated of America without any problems. My job was to get us from Kennewick, to Richland (about 10 miles away from one another). I failed. :o) We got lost. :o) Well, not LOST lost, we just took the way that I took on my bike ... which is not, necessarily, the best for a car ... lets say :o) So, it took us a while to get there, and I kept saying things like "No! no wait... ok, this is good, this is good, i remember that building, yeah...yeah! and this stop light looks familiar...ok, yeah! we're good. go straight."

And what did we do our first night in Richland? Got taco bell :o) We went through the drive through, took our food to the bank of the Columbia River, and ate it right at sun set (that was a coincidence, but it sure was nice :o) We waited to meet Patty (our land lord) and she showed us the house.

In essence: Mark and I had a lot of fun driving across the U.S. and we were ready to stay in one place for a while.

Here are some more pictures for your enjoyment of our adventures, in case you wanted to see more scenery we passed through:

Purdue in the Spring Time

Now, we all know that I am a Lobo at heart, and always will be. BUT. I DO have to admit that Purdue campus in the spring is one of the most beautiful things I have ever experienced. This point, however, must be tempered with the fact that as it is so miserable in the winter, and winter is so long, that when suddenly *POW!* spring is here! ....you are helplessly overwhelmed with joy and happiness :o) Often, this can be dangerous. For example, wearing a short sleeve shirt since the sun is shining and there is green grass outside, may not be a very good idea. In a sane climate this may indicate warm weather. Not so in Indiana. In Indiana, this is just a freak coincident. The grass is green ALL YEAR ROUND EVEN IN WINTER (even under snow! it keeps the grass insulated and watered so it is always green--VERY freaky phenomena) The rarity is that this coincides with the sun being out. :o) Gosh I love that sunshine though!! When the sun started coming out more (well, at all) I found I would just sit and stare out the window at the blue sky and clouds in my math class--and smile :o) I didn't catch a single word the teacher was saying after that point(maybe thats why I didnt do so good in that class?)

anyway! This has all be a prelude for the main event: SPRING PICTURES!!!! :-D


I mean, come on! Doenst this just prove my point?! This tree is almost like Mother Nature started throwing confetti as soon as the thermometer raised a few degrees. And these flowers were big. Like, small dinner plate big. Yeah. I know. :o) I put one in my hair (but it wilted real quick. How sad)


Here is another just really cool picture of a tree.

I am putting in a slide show of a few plants. I must explain that there are not that many. I had to take my cameras on campus, between classes, to take pictures, in the midst of throngs of students hurrying to get to class. And then I had lots of homework to do. And no time to take pictures. So! I took a picture of a few plants, and I plan to take more next time (becasue i wouldn't remember how badly I wanted to take pictures of all the pretty flowers untill i was looking at the flowers and then it was too late to grab the camera that was at home :o) I am learning though. In short, there are MILLIONS of types of flowering trees EVERYWHERE in IN. It is almost like EVERY tree has flowers, and then it gets leaves. They are so beautiful and I wish each of you could be here for the spring. I will take better pictures next time! Promise! :o)

Apartment in Indiana!

Home!!! For a little while at least :o) :-D This picture may be a little blurry, but that is becasue we got to Indiana at 2:00 am :o) The sign says, "The Bluff's Apartments," our first home. :o) A friend of Mark came over and helped us unpack our mattress, and then we went to sleep/passed out from exhaustion. WAY too many hours in a moving van will do that to ya :o)



The next day some other friends of mark, Bryan and Amanda, came over to help us really unpack :o) Here is the aftermath of that event. Boxes, boxes, everywhere and not a place to sit!!



My parents were coming to see us two days later for the reception that we had in Muncie Indiana, so we had quite a time getting things so that everyone would fit :o)


We used the bag that our mattress came in to put all the packing material and boxes and trash, etc. in. :o) Here is mark taking it down to our trash room. :o)








Yeah. It was SO heavy, it tilted the camera :-D












This is the trash room. It merited having its picture taken since it is a pretty big deal to have a room where the dumpsters are so that in the winter, we didnt have to go outside to put our trash out. THANK HEAVENS!!! As it was, going from the apartment to the car to a building for class just about killed me from the cold. This is also where we kept the bikes. Buuuut, due to the cold, we never used the bikes that winter :o)

After we got a place for them to sit down, the next most important thing to get was food:


This is me at a much later point in the official "study position" on the couch in the living room. Note the carpenters glasses--which belong to mark--and the hat--which also belongs to mark :o) . I happen to believe that the glasses make my eyes hurt less when I wear them after staring at a computer screen for SEVERAL hours a day. And, its cold in indiana, so naturally you have to be bundled up, hence the fuzzy blanket. :o)

and...sadly...that is ALL the pictures i EVER took of that house :o( OH NO!!! I didnt realize this till I took the pictures off the camera. Dont worry, I have done a better job taking pictures of our new apartment.

So! Since I don't have pictures to show you how wonderful our old apartment was, I will have to try to tell you with words :o)

Here goes:

Well!! As I said, we lived in "The Bluff's" Apartments on the top of a hill (yeah, I know, a hill in Indiana, wierd) by a doughnut shop that has been around for YEARS called mary lou doughnuts --Mark even remembers going there as a kid. The apartment was surrounded by trees, and the animal shelter was very near us, so we got to hear lots of birds every morning, and lots of dogs howling too :o). The birds, I must admit, are the coolest in indiana. I had a bird clock that my grandma gave to me for my birthday which has a different bird call every hour. Growing up in NM, and not really having all that many birds, I used to wonder what "exotic" place people had go to to get those bird calls. Now I know they went to Indiana ;o). Mark would tease me that my clock "escaped out the window" when we would go to school in the morning because we would hear the same calls as on the clock :-D I was, (and am ) thoughraly amazed by this. I loved it. We moved there in the winter so there were no leaves on the trees at that time, but mark and I would sit on our couch on sunday afternoon and watch the trees sway. Yes. Sway. Our trees would sway in the wind. The trees towered over our apartment--and we lived on the third floor mind you--so apparently they were very tall and spry and elastically since they never seemed to break :o) they just swayed. That was pretty cool. It was really cozy, really nice, and we loved it there. Brian and Amanda lived in our building and we would go to the temple together in Chicago and have FHE sometimes together (the game and dessert part) and just in general be good friends with them. They are GREAT people and we sure love them a lot. :o) I guess a story that can sum up the ambiance of the house for you is this: Mark had gotten some sparkling cider when we were married, it traveled across the states with us in our luggage, and we planned on opening it for a celebration when we unpacked the house. :o) We were so busy with school, and since school started the weekend after we got there, we never had a chance to "fully" unpack. So! It wasnt until we moved that we drank the cider :o) The missionaries and people from our branch came over and helped us move the things from our apartment into storage, and we packed up our house in one day. This was nothing short from an act from on high since I was REALLY worried about getting out on time. One our last trip packing up our stuff, we opened the cider, and drank some juice, and talked about the memories that we had in that house (which, you may not think were many since we were only there for a semester, but it is really nice being married, and it is just nice to make memories with the people you love, no matter how simple they are.) We joked that maybe that would have to be a tradition of ours: drinking to memories and new beginnings.

Sorry it took so long to tell you guys about where I was living :o) but life was SO hectic last semester! When ever we got to a point where we could stop doing homework (note this is not that we were finished with it, just that we could stop, very important distinction) we would just spend time and talk with one another. One of our favorite things to do is watch movies. We gradually learned that starting a movie at 10:30 at night was not a good idea, no matter how long it had been since we had taken a break and watched a movie or how much homework we had done that day. :o) And, we love making pizza and trying new recipes and combinations. I will keep you posted on what the best crust recipe is so far ;o)

I will try to do better this semester at keep you all updates. I promise the teek! :o)

On The Road Again...

Yep! This title pretty much sums up the whole of mine and mark's married life together :o) It seems like the moment we got married...we were in the car going...and whenever we got to where we were going, we got right back in to go some place else! :o) Oh goodness!

So! Here we go with some pictures and stories of our motor adventures together thus far

UTAH TO NEW MEXICO!!
Here are some pictures of out trip down to NM after the wedding. We did it in one day, and didn't get into NM until about 11:30 pm or so if I remember correctly :o( That means that not only did we not get to see my family as soon as we had hoped, but the prettiest part of the trip (in my opinion)...was completely dark!! Mark drove most of the way, and when we got tired in some little town in NM, we stopped at McDonald's for milk shakes (a tradition of ours now on road trips :o) )


NEW MEXICO TO INDIANA!!
Here are some pictures of our trip up to IN from NM. We started later in the day than we would have like, road trip wise, but we didnt want to have to say good bye, and it took longer to pack the stuff than we had anticipated. :o) I had a LOT of stuff, and it took a LONG time to pack it. If my mom hadnt helped/packed most of it, and if my family weren't so good at helping, I think we still may have been back in NM. (not that thats a bad thing necessarily)



story: we were making it our goal to be able to take a picture of all the state signs of each of the states we passed through. We were doing pretty good...except for the fact that we passed through Texas, Kanasas, Illinois, AND Indiana in the middle of the night! :o) Cameras (at least ours) don.t work too well at night. This is why in SOME of the pictures look like little blurry blobs of light :o) In the captions, there should be some translation for you from "nocturnal blur" into "english" ;o)

Story: since we decided to take the pictures of the states signs, and we passed through texas at night, that means that Oklahoma was the next state on our list. Note in the pictures that a "rest area closed" sign precedes the "Oklahoma" sign. I didnt see that the rest area was closed, so I was convinced that we could pull over and have our pictures taken WITH the sign; mark was convinced that it was closed and that we couldnt. Long story short, I didnt have the camera ready when we passed by since I thought we could stop, so we whizzed right on by with out a picture. "But Wait!" you say, "I saw a picture of the Oklahoma state sign in your slide show?...how can this be?". Weeeell...mark drove down the road about 5 miles, then turned around at the next exit and drove back PASSED the sign about five miles to the NEXT exit to turn around AGAIN...all so that I could get my picture :-D What a PATIENT man I married!! He is so wonderful. I think that is what made it so funny that half the signs we didn't get since they were in the dark :o( but by golly did we get that oklahoma state sign! ;o)

story: For some reason, there are about 5 instances of "The Worlds Largest Cross" or "Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere" on the side of the road from New Mexico to Indiana. I don't know why this is. Mark said he had seen the same thing in Ecuador, but I don't think I have ever seen Enormous, 8-10 story high white crosses, with lights on them. I took pictures of this phenomena, and if anyone drives out to see us...you will know what I am talking about (very hard to miss)

Story: We took a detour into Kansas to visit Marks Aunt and Uncle Bob and Rima and their 4 lovely girls. They were really nice, and let us sleep there, and fed us, and visited with us. And THEN! :o) when we were getting ready to leave, we were cleaning out the car. There was this empty milk shake cup so I was filling it with trash...then I walked back into the house to say good bye and throw away said cup of trash....and after I said good bye, I realized the cup of trash was NOT in my hand and I had DEFINITELY not been to the trash can since I had no idea where it was. Yes. For all intent and purposes I had unintentionally "stashed" a cup of trash-in my husbands families house-who I had just met-and I had no idea where it was. YIKES!! When this realization came to me, I remember looking at my hands, thinking, and then slowly looking up to say: "Um...I had a cup of trash that I was trying to throw away...and I have no idea where I put it...I think it's in the house somewhere..." Needless to say, marks family thought that was a little weird, but they helped me look for it. We didn't find it. --The BEST part of the story is, we found it in the car about an hour later. :-D SO!! At the end of the day, we still had a cup of trash in the car, and marks family had a perfect idea of what a strange girl their nephew had married. :o) Two Birds ;o)

Story: At one point, Mark and I had gone to Taco Bell for dinner. We had left a soft taco uneaten, and it was forgotten in the moving truck overnight. The next day, we were really hungry when lunch came around, but we were in the middle of nowhere, so we couldnt stopfor food. I was rummaging in the bag of snacks that Nan had given to mark and I (which we LOVED!) for food whenI I came across this soft taco! It had been so cold the night before that it was completely frozen through. Being frozen, we figured it was still good. We turned on the heater and held the taco in front of the vents to warm it up. Yes. We held the taco in front of the vents , to warm it up. Then, we ate it. Still partially frozen. (after all, heater vents aren't designed with the heat output to re-heat food. :o)) How gross is that?!? *sigh*. Man do mark and I have a lot of fun together. It really it amazing that we are still alive. :o)

In general, I took a ma-ZILLION pictures of all the flat nothingness we passed through. It kinnda freaked me out at first, since there was just...flat. Lots, and lots of flat. I just kept snapping the camera! There is only a small fraction of the pictures I took on the blog to spare your attention spans :o) Now, flat is what we see all the time here now. :o) It is spiced up with corn and soy bean fields though. Gotta love Indiana. ;o)

Memory Lane

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot. Anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty fun to see the responses. If you leave me a memory about me, I'll assume you are playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one for you.

More to Come Soon!!

I promise!! Mark and I are in the process of unpacking our stuff right now... and we have a LOT of stuff :o) ... and a tiny little (but VERY cute) apartment in married student housing on campus. We LOVE it here!! We have one of the best views ever out or front room: the soccer fields :o) Really, they are pretty, (and not just because my husband is a soccer nut and wants to go out and play with them all the time). Beyond the field is a forest, and above the forest is exactly where the sun sets, so it is really really nice to take walks, and it is so peaceful over here. We totally, LOVE IT! We have taken a lot of pictures for you guys, BUT! (hence the promise of more blogs to come) I cant find that magical little chord that will allow me to get the pictures out of my camera :o( So! fun blogs and promised pictures will be soon to come, pending the finding of the magical cord. :o) You would think that would be incentive enough for me to get off the computer and start unpacking, huh ;o)

BUT! first, a few stories :o)

We had lots of people come and help us move our stuff into our apartment :o) Mark decided he was having so much fun he took matters into his own hands and left the keys in the moving truck when we turned it back in and locked the door. OH NO!!! yes, yes, I know this is shocking, primarily because it was not me that left it in the truck, chronic key-lock-er-in-er that I am. (I would call to your remeberance the keys I locked in the TRUNK of mom's convertible when we were checking out of the hotel...for instance. Not to mention the time I locked the keys in the car at the church building...and the time I locked them in the car at the institute building...) Mark says that I am rubbing off on him. oops! We called the rental truck people (since it was after they had closed) and they said that we could call a locksmith, or they could. One of the elders that was helping us, Elder Garfield, said that he could break into cars since he used to work at a car auction *wink wink* (jk! Elder Garfield is a great guy! :o), and offered to help us out. After examining the truck, he said that we definitly should call a locksmith (apparently, moving trucks are pretty hard to get into). True to this elders prediction, the locksmith we called had a veeeeeery hard time getting into the truck. Eventually he had to call for reinforcements. oh dear!! Thankfully, he finally got into it and we were able to say good bye to the moving truck. :o) HOO-RAY!!


The next funny story I had is mostly for Iwalani's benefit :o) Well!! we just got Rupie-mach-II back from the doctors (translation: we just got my laptop back from the computer service) and he is all better!! No worries!! :-D

Now, for all of you who were wondering what was wrong with him....(drum roll please)....there had been TWO cd's smached into Ruperts mouth! ha! No WONDER he couldnt spit them out!! :o) Its situations like this that make me wonder how "being retarded" could possibly be covered under my computer warranty, although I'm really glad that it is :o) You would think that something like this would fall under "user misuse" or something like that. I am really glad that people don't over estimate how helplessly retarded people can be with technology sometimes :o) On fact, I wonder if it is possible to underestimate some people :o) *sigh* what I would give to know what the computer tech was thinking when he opened up Rupie...especially since I introduced him to Rupert AND told the receptionist that I thought my laptop had gotten "car sick" on our cross country trip ... ;o)

more to come!!! cross my heart ;o)

...before the beginning :o)

I figured we should put a few pictures in here from our engagement as well :o)



Mark and I met through an introduction from Marks Aunt Katie and my Mommy after Katie and her family moved to NM and she and my mom became friends. My mom called me one afternoon while I was on an internship in WA and told me that she had given my email to her friend for her nephew and that someone might be emailing me in the next few weeks. I doubted to ever hear from someone who would email a strange girl based off a distant aunts recommendation of a girl she had never met... WELL! on Marks end, he was in the hospital getting his lung re-inflated and glued to the wall of his chest cavity when Aunt Katie called and said that he should email me. Being in tremendous pain, he decided to pass and focus on relearning how to breathe ;o) before he thought about emailing some girl. A few months later Aunt Katie again suggested that he email me. Truth be told, we both thought that we would never, ever get into a long distance relationship-especially an internet based relationship...

Then began the emails which shortly lead to the phone calls which shortly lead to the VERY expensive phone bill (apparently, talking for 4-5 hours a day can be a bit costly when you are not on the same cell phone provider, go figure) which promptly lead to buying a phone on the same plan as mark, which shortly lead to my flying out to meet mark, which lead to our getting engaged in the car driving back from meeting marks parents, which lead to us getting sealed which leads to us -being in the process of- living happily ever after!! :-D HOO-RAY!

So! before the beginning there was a lot of blessings, luck, and preparation that lead to Mark and I having the opportunity of meeting and developing a close friendship that serves as the building block of our future. How lucky I am to be married to my bestest-best friend who I get to play with every day!

In the beginning...

...we were married! :-D

This is the temple we were sealed in (note: this is not a picture taken at the wedding as there is noticeable greenery and lack of snow ;o) )











This is an actual picture of the temple on our wedding day (note: the realistic presence of the shivering, huddled masses) sorry everyone about the snow! -really sorry about the ice Eddy :o( thanks so much for sticking out the snow and attending our sealing, it was so wonderful, I am so glad for those of you who were able to come and share a little bit of heaven with mark and I. We sure love you all!



Mark and I were sealed in the Mt. Timpanogoes Temple in the afternoon of December 21, 2007, the first day of winter. As such, (for those of you who were not there) it was freezing, really windy, and snowy, and perfectly wonderful. We got sealed in Utah, even though neither of us is from Utah, because when we got engaged we realized both our families would be in the St. Lake area at Christmas: Mark's family because his older brother, Michael, got sealed the day after us, my family because we were having a family reunion since my sister and my two cousins, Johnny and Barry came home from their missions, making it the first time my moms side of the family was all home at one time for several years.

While I would not jump at suggesting a winter wedding to anyone else (there is something to say about being able to stand outside without having the blood congeal in your veins) a wedding ring is a pretty awesome Christmas's gift ;o) . I am very grateful we were able to have such a lovely, wonderful wedding and such a beautiful beginning for our new life together. How wonderful it is that the sealing power has been restored, and what a wonderful blessing it is that Mark and I can be together forever! The best-est Christmas gift forever! :o)

Here is a slide show of me and mark coming out of the temple! Please note that as it was so cold they let us take wedding pictures inside the temple for a little bit. Then we were chased back outside in the cold. Also note, that it is really, really hard to smile while your teeth are chattering (and yes, those are smiles, not grimaces, I promise):


After the sealing we went to Darbles and Eddy's house to have an open house. My mom and aunt shaun and many others decorated, planned, and provided wonderful, beautiful, delicious food. What a wonderful, gracious family we have! :-D

Here is a slide show of the open house (thanks so much to all of you who made this possible and wonderful! thank you thank you thank you!! ):



Then, we had a quick drive back down to NM for the reception there! (thank you shelly and my wonderful mom and family and katie's family and mommy harggett and everyone else who helped with everything) here is the slide show!:



here is the reception in IN (thanks so much to mark's parents and friends of the family who made this possible! all we did was show up and they had taken care of everything! thank you thank you thank you!):



There is no way that we could have done any of this with out all the help that you guys gave to mark and I. Thank you so much (especially to my mom) to all of you. In looking over these pictures I realized just how MUCH everyone did for us! :o) What a wonderful blessing it was to us, and thank you all so much.