Lookin forward to 2011

2010 has been a pretty good year for us and I'm excited to make resolutions for the new year. I'll be starting classes come the 3rd of January and they are not going to be as interesting to me as last semesters were but they will knock off a bunch of general credits that I need for my associates. On the 4th of January it will be our 5 year wedding anniversary! This week I am packing and getting everything in order for our trip to Las Vegas on the 6th. I know that I am a basket case the first week or two of school so its best that I get packed before then. I plan on taking some time to get myself all dolled up for this trip :) so I'll probably throw in some low lights, and make my finger and toenails look great!
These past few weeks have been a nice break from school although it would be nicer if I had a car (it should be fixed today sometime) and then I wont be so stranded. Jared will be taking a microbiology class from Weber State this semester, we just paid for it and I really cant wait till the left over amount from Jareds Pell Grant at the ATC comes so that it will pay for it... classes and books are so expensive!
I'll post pics of our trip when we get back, everybody enjoy your new years!

Ah Christmas family pics

So every year its the same, Christmas picture time is a bloody battle that lasts about a half an hour, its full of cursing, crying, begging and finally bribing... no joke....and tonight was no different, although my camera has a cool feature that actually takes pictures when we are smiling all on its own! SO COOL!! Its much better than setting the camera up putting it on a ten second hold and hoping and praying that were all in position and smiling when the pictures start happening! I've been playing with piknic a free photo editing thing on the web and I've got my pictures ready for the 2nd Christmas letter we've ever done so if you want a Christmas letter this year give me your address please! e-mailing it to me is fine (zjanidame@hotmail.com) or you can just post it on here.

School is pretty much over, I have one final project due on Thursday for art, and that's not stressful its just fun for me. I'm thinking that my grades are gonna be pretty darn good... maybe all straight A's or maybe one or 2 A- we'll find out soon, I'm stoked cuz the last time I got straight A's I was in middle school..?

Tomorrow I plan on organizing my filthy unorganized house and that will be delightful, I can't find things and that makes me crazy so were gonna take care of that. Umm a couple days ago I got is a slight car accident so now I'm waiting for insurance to figure out liability and then maybe I can fix my van, its been stressing me out but I have little control at this point so I choose not to think about it.

Just a picture update

Konnor turned 1!

Halloween 2010

I put up new bathroom backsplash

and i know it looks like jared only owns one hoodie, apparently the only time I get a picture of him is when he is wearing his black hoodie.

My not break

As you know I've returned to school this semester, now I have one week left (finals week) and then I get a pleasant break before I return to spring semester for some really tuff classes. So while I have not been posting I have been filling my time with building a playhouse, not going on facebook or blogs, not watching T.V. and homework every night until 11 when Jared arrives home. I'm happy with my "wise" use of my time because I love control and I'm the type of person who can waste a lot of valuable time when I have the remote in my hand or if I feel the need to be current with everyone elses' life thru facebook and blogs. Not that it isn't enjoyable :) it just doesn't help me reach my goals. While I've filled my life with "not fun" I've discovered that there is still not enough hours in the day, it is impossible to do school work when the children are awake, and I can live on less sleep.
Jared and I have our 5 year anniversary coming up and were actually going to do something! The vacation plans have been purchased and the date is set so there is no going back- although at times I've thought I was crazy for spending so much money (it really wasn't that much). Which brings me to the point I felt like blogging about today- getting out of debt. This is more of a written commitment for myself so if money and debt bores you then feel free to quit reading now.
Were not in major debt, our cars are paid off, Jared's student loan is on deferral until he is again done with school and we have never used credit cards. The debt we do have is money owed for car repairs, to my parents for a small amount borrowed for closing costs when we refinanced our home, and two lines of credit. In the end if I were to make a pretty educated guess we probably owe just under 4,000.... (when I type that I think man that is a huge number). Its not all due at once and we plan on getting real people paid off first (its the smaller amount anyway) and then tackling the banks. I've tried approaching the debt in the past with what I would call a band-aid method, pay it off quickly in a giant lump sum with any extra money we seem to scrounge up, but not only is that super hard to do it is super depressing when you can't make those huge goals and life uses the "extra" money you thought you would have. I think my problem is that I keep picturing the future months as completely devoid of money sucking problems, that has yet to occur in my married life so small steps to eliminate our debt is probably a better solution. Things I think are working in my financial planning are adding debt to my budget, every month I have $150 figured in to pay down something. Another thing that seems to help is finding ways to earn extra cash to put toward debt. From the money I've made I've been able to pay for all but $60 of our anniversary so before too long I'll have the complete trip paid for. I think that when schools out I'm gonna find a couple financial books from the library to give me some fresh ideas on how I can help our issues. If you know of any good self help financial books I'm open to suggestions..

dollar store fairy princess

Today we went to Honks a dollar and bought this whole costume for $2, and i had fun putting clip in extentions to my little Makayla's hair and she loved the whole thing... were set for Halloween!

I know its been awhile

Makayla turned 3
up at the cabin

jared at bear lake

So I have several minutes and just because I hate feeling so far behind on anything I wanted to update you on how life is. I am in school and I actually stayed in my drawing class that I was so upset over in the last post... it was an emotional night and it didn't help that I had just gotten mastitis again. I absolutely love my drawing class, its pretty simple and i think its just so cool to draw again. I am on a team for the Wasatch Back Ragnar again and I'm gonna train hard to be ready for that, my only goal is to NOT get pregnant before that. Konnor and Makayla are doing good and growing like weeds. Jared has been at his job for a year now and he will finally be getting paid time off come October, its been a long wait. My yard had gone to pot since I've started school but slowly with the rains we get it will green up again. We've been trying to refinance our home for several months now and I believe it will all go through this coming month and we will be at a much smaller interest rate. My little bro will be home from S. Africa in less than 2 weeks now and I am so stoked to see him and have him home again. So ya that's just whats happening and If I get a minute again I'll tell you how its all working out ;)

At an impass

I like to take the path of least resistance and I hate to step on anyone's toes, and just like i hate being committed to someone elses schedule I know that others would hate being committed to mine. So for this reason i think I'm gonna drop the only fun class I've ever signed up for because it requires me to find someone to watch my cute kids, but as cute as my kids are they are also almost 3 and 8 months old and they need attention and someone who wants to watch them. It'll be nice when Jared is able to be home with them and I can have more freedom with my school schedule but I think for now I'd better choose something online to replace the drawing I class. I'm not posting this for volunteers I'm just posting this to get some of my feelings out :( But hey what mom hasn't made sacrifices? Thanks for letting me be a boob.

Here i am

So a lot has happened between here and now, i just kinda got burned out with the blogging and needed a break. So Its July and were in the process of refinancing our home and of course these things take longer than anyone would hope but if were lucky in the end we will have a smaller mortgage payment. Konnors crawling all over the place... its an army crawl but he is super fast with it... and of course he thinks he should eat everything he comes across, i feel distracted all of the time and I'm pretty sure he has a guardian angel following him around because I'll come across things on the ground that shouldn't be eaten so I'll pick it up and it'll be wet with slobber but not ingested so hopefully that angel doesn't mind picking up where I'm obviously failing!

I got this crazy idea that i wanted to take some classes, specifically some art classes and i thought the college would be a good place to learn and so i registered for fall semester at Weber state and today i got my acceptance letter! Hopefully all will go well with financial aid because last time i checked i didn't have 2 grand in my back pocket. So I'm registered for 13 credit hours and I'm taking 2 nutrition classes, 2 art classes and a health class. All of the classes are online except for one drawing class which will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I'm still trying to square away where my children will be at that time because driving back and forth from Ogden to pleasant view and Weber state will be a booger. I don't know that i will be blogging much once classes do start, hopefully i can focus and get decent grades, right now I'm pretty excited about it all.

My triathlon went good, the weekend it was on was a horrible weekend and because of the cold i had a cold and was wishing that i didn't need to blow my nose every ten minutes. The water was a cool 59 degrees and i was a dork and didn't test ride my bike before the race other than to make sure the seat height was okay so i learned some valuable obvious lessons. The run was fine and we were all really lucky that we didn't get rained on.

Thats pretty much all for now, have a wonderful day!

Fashion Challenge

I would like a few new outfits for the summer and since i feel like I'm far from the fashion scene and knowing whats in style and I've developed a weird relationship with money I'm gonna be extremely creative with how i go about getting these few outfits. First off I haven't yet picked out the wardrobes i like but I'll be scanning the Internet and sites that i like to pick out a few got to have getup's. But instead of ordering or running to the nearest department store I'm gonna update what i have and then hit some thrift shops and favorite discounters for the rest. All of my looks will be modest and appropriate but hopefully very trendy and something different from my everyday jeans and a t-shirt look. I haven't come up with a price limit but I will be posting what everything cost, how and where i found it and maybe it'll stir up some creative juices for you also. Who doesn't like a challenge? FYI if you've seen something that you think would be a great summer look send me a link I'm completely open for suggestions :) (if you want to join in and find an outfit too be my guest and let me know and I'll post a link to your page also)

My Thoughts

For some reason the past few days I've felt like I've accomplished all of the major milestones in life and now I'm just filling in the blank until grandchildren... who thinks that way? Graduate from High school, Check; Go to school and get a trade in something you like, Check; Move out, Check; Get Married, Check; Buy a house, Check; Have babies, Check; then what comes next? I know the options are limitless but as far as milestones i feel like I've hit all the big ones. Raising children doesn't always have milestones that you can just check off, each day is a new rendition of the last and i seriously need to make some more goals or I'm gonna lose my mind. I'm no where close to perfect, but i look at what i have and i pretty much have it made, the potential to have an influence for good is there and i obviously need to be more busy and involved in life. There really is so much to learn and to practice that I could honestly be actively engaged in something all of the time, I just want to shift my focus from myself to those around me and share the good that i have in my life so that others may have the same comfort, stability, and truth that brings about a personal peace. For starters I'd like you all to know that I love my religion which is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I know that it is the only true church on the earth today, It is headed by a Prophet namely Thomas S. Monson who receives direct revelation from a loving Heavenly Father and he leads and guides the church with this modern day revelation, I believe in personal revelation and I know that when I am in need of any help, comfort or direction in my own life I am able to pray to my Heavenly Father who listens and answers my prayers. I know that the Prophet Joseph Smith saw God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ and he restored the Gospel to the earth by their direction. I've read the Book Of Mormon, I have a testimony of it and know that it is true and offers so much guidance for us in this world today. I have a desire to read the Bible cover to cover and I'm working on it, I don't know everything and I've got a lot to learn, but as far as the basics of who I am and where I come from and hopefully where I'm going, I am at peace with all of those questions because I've known the answers most of my life. If any of you out there are struggling with where you fit in and how to find joy and peace I'd love for you to either ask me or better yet check out any of the websites that the church has set up for all of these questions. Here are some links to direct you there -
http://www.mormon.org
http://www.lds.org/
They are both great websites with gobs of information and resources, Thanks for letting me share something so close to my heart.

a picture update

I promised some pics and now I'm finally getting around to it, we did a really bad job of taking pictures for Easter... well we took pics but most of them were not very good. Thanks for all the suggestions and comments about my last post, Coleton is surprisingly doing better and now has plans on going to mission prep every Sunday morning which is way cool. He never went and got his ears pierced because my husband told him that they (the plasma place) wouldn't let him donate plasma for quite awhile if he did, so that kinda took some wind out of his sails. We all think he needs to be surrounded by positive people who can let him know how great he really is and what brings true happiness in life.

So the following is a small assortment of all that I've been working on

some Easter pics

our backyard with a view and a lawn that needs to be mowed

flowers that are also just weeds that occur all on their own but i think they are pretty so i leave them alone

starts of my spinach

peas, one of the few things i grow well

onions (started last year from seed) they look better this year

so here are some pics of my daughters dress, it was actually quite fun to make although i need so much more practice.