Pictures!

Since getting back from Maine with a bunch of pictures to play with, I've been spending a lot of time working on my pictures. It's so much fun. I seriously spend pretty much all day doing this, only taking a break to eat or do something else when my eyes start to hurt from staring at the computer. I'll post some of the pictures that I've been working on, but I also wanted to mention one picture in particular that I've worked on.

A couple years ago, we got to go to Sadie's blessing and to a family gathering later on. I brought my camera and had fun taking pictures. Well, I happened to take a picture of Ashton's grandma holding Sadie. I loved the picture and wanted to make it special. I tried various techniques using Gimp (a free photoshop-type program, which I love), but couldn't figure out how to make it work to my liking and gave up. Well, the other day my screen saver was on and the picture popped up. I remembered the disappointment I had in not being able to do what I wanted with it and started thinking of how to make it work. It wasn't until yesterday, while working on some other pictures, that I had an idea to use the same techniques that I was using on other pictures (I'm not telling you what that was so I don't ruin the surprise). It took a little bit of time, but I was happy with the end result. As always, even though I thought it was good, I wanted to make sure that it really was good and showed it to Ashton when he got home from work. He loved it. So, here is that picture and some of the other ones I took and worked on from Maine.

Let me know what you think!

All Over the Place

So, I've fallen behind on blogging. Mostly for a lack of time recently more than anything. This month has been a bit nuts for me.

A couple of weeks after moving into our new place, I left to go to Maine to help my brother Jacob and his family get settled into their new house. The trip out in and of itself was eventful since I missed my connection by a few minutes (thanks to a combination of snow in Colorado while trying to fly out and having to go from concourse C to F in 10 minutes) so I ended up having to sit in the airport for 8 hours while waiting for the next flight. No, I'm not kidding. I was there for 8 hours. Good thing I had brought some books. I was very grateful when I finally got to get on the flight and land in Maine.

There was still construction going on in Jacob and Heather's house while they were trying to get settled, so that made things interesting. Although I got a chance to paint and peel wallpaper off, the wallpaper part isn't always a whole lot of fun when it won't come off easily, those tasks were made all the more difficult while trying to keep little hands out of the paint and away from the putty knife. I didn't think that gouges in the wall would make anyone happy. It's also hard to convince a 2 year old that the new toy she discovered, namely the spray bottle filled with water and vinegar, doesn't need to be used constantly. Although the girls were dedicated to taking wallpaper off, that is until there were only little pieces to be peeled off. I had a great time though. It's always fun to play with the girls and see how big they've gotten since the last time I was out there, although, that part is a little sad too because they get so big so fast. I was definitely tired and ready to sleep for days on end when it came time for me to fly back home.

The trip back out was also stressful since my connection times were a bit short and I had two of them. I made all of my flights though, thanks to making up some lost time in the air on the first flight, and landed on time in Colorado.

That trip alone was enough traveling for me to last a little while, but the next day, Ashton and I left to drive to Utah for Lance's graduation. It was a little strange to unpack some of my clothes only to leave some of them in the suitcase, and pack a few different ones. It was nice to see everyone though even if it was only for a short while since we left Saturday to drive back home. I was happy though to get home, unpack all of my stuff, and put away the suitcase. Living out of a suitcase is fine for a little while, but it's so nice when you don't have to do that anymore. Ashton was also nice enough while I was in Maine to transport the empty boxes and the boxes that were only partially unpacked back to the storage unit. So when I got home, I was pleasantly surprised to not see boxes everywhere.

And of course, I have pictures! What kind of aunt would I be if I didn't take pictures of my nieces? Although, I missed taking pictures of some of my other nephews and nieces when they came up to visit. I missed the boat on that one. Anyways, here's a sampling of the pictures I took. As always, I took more than I can post.

Jane was learning to crawl while I was there, so that was fun to see.
She's much bigger than the tiny baby I remember.

The girls were out riding bikes whenever they could.

Liliana was more interested in taking pictures than having her picture taken, but she let me take this one.

Dress up time! I love Mattie's look. Kind of reminds me of an older woman/tourist.

Such a cute face.

Playing on the playground.

Musical Chairs

So, it's been a while. A lot of things have changed since the last time I wrote. For starters, we moved into an apartment closer to where Ashton works! Ashton is loving the shorter commute and who wouldn't with the commute dropping from an hour down to 10 minutes?

We love the area that we're in. We took a drive Sunday, since it was so nice out, just to go exploring and we had a lot of fun. There were a lot of people out biking, and I mean A LOT, so that made it interesting, especially when we were on windy roads with hardly any shoulder.

Since we moved last weekend, this week has been quite a bit of unpacking. There are still things to be unpacked, but all the essentials are out and in their new homes. I'm discovering things that we need that we'll have to get out of storage, and things that we don't need that can go back in. It's like a big game of musical chairs.

I am happy that we've managed to get everything installed (washer, dryer, internet, etc) without too much hair pulling. Good thing I've had stuff to do while waiting for people to come. Less stressful that way.

On a completely different note, I saw this video and wanted to share it.

One Down, Many More to Go

Well, Ashton's had his first week of work. That's right, I said work! For those of you who haven't heard, Ashton has a job now. He got offered a job last Friday and started Monday. The job is here in Colorado although it's about an hour away. For right now, he's just been commuting down there.

We're pretty excited about the job. Hooray for money coming in! It's been a bit of an adjustment though. For starters, no more sleeping in for him. With the hour commute either way, it's a pretty full day for him and he comes home pretty tired. Of course, for me, it means an empty house to myself. I know for those mothers out there, that sounds pretty good, but believe me, it's not all that it's cracked up to be. Doable, but not preferable.

There are still a lot of things to figure out now that Ashton has a job. Such as, housing. We're still not sure what we're going to do, but we'll be figuring that out soon. Moving into a new place is always pretty exciting, although picking out a place can be a bit of a headache. It's nice though to have progression.

Of course, now that we have income, I can do some much needed shopping! I've been holding off as much as possible so as not to deplete our savings. I still won't go crazy with the shopping, but I do need some new jeans.

Procrastination

Ashton and I were asked to give talks this Sunday and while I've started writing mine up, I'm now taking a break. I haven't gotten too far into it, but in my defense, what sounded good and complete in my head, has turned out to be far from the truth. I always spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to say and then write it down on paper. It's taking a lot longer than I thought it would to put this to paper.

Although it's taking a while to write down the talk, I'm more nervous about getting up there and actually giving it. I hate the whole feeling of shaking knees, heart pounding, and what ends up being a race to finish my talk and sit down. A deacon had it right when he said at the end of his testimony this past Sunday, "I can't stand this anymore" and sat down. I get nervous when I make a comment during Sunday School or Relief Society, so the idea of actually standing up in front of a large group of people and talking for however many minutes (we weren't actually given a specific amount of time to talk...do I hear 2 minute talk?) is rather nerve racking.

Since I'm so nervous about this, I'm in the process of trying to bribe Ashton into giving the talk for me, but he's not going for it. I've even offered to write it up just as long as he gets up there and reads it for me, but even after throwing in the promise of cake, he's still not going for it. That just means that I'm going to either have to wear him down, or suck it up and do it myself. Wearing him down sounds like way more fun though.

In other news, we are still looking for work. Right now, Ashton's still interviewing with Amazon for a job in Seattle. He's actually been granted a face-to-face interview and we're waiting to hear back about what day that is! This is definitely a big and important step towards getting this job, so we'd definitely appreciate any prayers on our behalf.

A New Blog

Ashton started up a blog of his own to talk about his programming projects. He's much better than I am about the whole updating thing seeing as he created the blog yesterday and has already written twice. I thought, however, that I'd create an entry with the link to his new blog for those of you who would be interested in reading it. http://halla-dev.blogspot.com

While I'm here, I might as well write an update about what we've been up to. While we're still looking for a job, we've taken up projects to keep us busy and entertained. Some of the projects are individual. For example, Ashton is usually on the computer doing some programming and reading up on stuff (news, more programming stuff...). I usually bounce back and forth from the computer (when I can steal it or I just use the laptop), to reading books (picked some up from the library), to anything else I can think of.

Other projects, we do together. Usually that ends up being a game. Sometimes, however, we'll watch the news together or take a trip somewhere. Last Saturday, we went down to Colorado Springs to do some sight seeing. We went to the Garden of the Gods. There were more people there than I expected, but it still was nowhere near as busy as I'm sure it gets in the summertime. It wasn't too cold out as well so that made it even nicer. I, of course, brought my camera and had a blast taking pictures. We'd start walking and then I'd all of a sudden stop because I had seen something that I wanted to take a picture of. Ashton was a good sport about it. I took about 140 pictures there so there was a lot of stopping involved. Ashton would sometimes suggest that I take a picture of something, so he got into it as well.

On our way home from Colorado Springs, the sun was beginning to set and it looked like it was going to be a cool sunset. So, we headed over to Waneka Lake so that I could take some pictures of that. Well, the sunset wasn't as spectacular as we thought it'd be, but still good enough to take pictures of. Not to mention, there were lots of flocks of geese on the lake so they made fun models. Too bad it was a bit too dark to see them really well. I guess I'll have to head over there during the day to try to get some better geese pictures. It was a lot of fun.

So I'd post some of the pictures I took except for two things. One, I discovered after I put the pictures on the computer that I apparently had some spots on my lens. Spots that I'm pretty sure that I've cleaned before and had tried to clean off just before taking the majority of these pictures. Apparently, it didn't work. So now I have about 200 pictures to clean up on the computer. It makes a good project no matter how redundant I'm sure it'll feel while I'm doing it. This brings up reason number two that I won't be posting the pictures yet: in order to clean up the pictures, I need the desktop to do it because it's faster than the laptop and because that's where the pictures are. Unfortunately, this is also the computer that Ashton uses to do his programming because it's faster and that's where his program is, and as I said earlier, he's on the computer a lot. I'm thinking we need to talk over some custody rights.

Well, seeing as I have the computer for a little while, I better get going on those pictures...

It's Been a Year Already?

Generally, I'm not one for New Year's resolutions. I figure that it's not going to last very long anyways, so why bother going through all the trouble of making special goals simply because that's what you're supposed to do at the beginning of a year? Not worth it. I prefer to make my goals because that's what I want to do.

Looking back on the last year, I did accomplish some goals that I wanted to. I did lose the weight that I wanted to, dropping 10-ish pounds and reaching the 130's! More importantly, I can fit into some of my old pants again and fit into them comfortably. It's rather exciting. Now if I can only maintain, I'll be set!

Speaking of maintaining, last year I did start running like I wanted to for a while. Thanks to Tiff for being a great motivation to getting up and running. Unfortunately, I haven't been running since we moved, although yesterday I did get up and go. I also dragged Ashton out of bed to go with me although he walked while I ran. I'm thinking that I'll probably have to go by myself from now on though. Getting up early and walking in the cold is not Ashton's idea of fun and while it's not my idea of fun either, if I want to keep in shape, I need to do it.

One of the biggest goals that we have accomplished this past year was moving out of Utah. Probably the more exciting goal anyways, not to mention the most stressful. Although we're still looking for a job, we're happy to be out of Utah and the craziness that is there. I'm starting to get to know my way around Colorado, or at least this area. The amazing thing is that I'm not just learning how to get to different locations (the store, Aunt Marcia's, etc) and back (always important to know how to get back home), but I'm learning where the street names, where they come out, and so forth. I've never been too good with directions, getting turned around quite easily. Directions were always given by landmarks and familiarity with different areas. So, to be able to tell you what street to turn on to get to the store, where a street will take you, and to be able to visualize which streets are parallel or perpendicular to other streets is quite amazing for me. It's not like I'm an expert yet, but I'm getting there.

As far as goals for this year are concerned, we've made a few and I have a couple of my own. Some of the more obvious ones are getting a job and then a place to live. Hopefully, it'll happen soon. We're still optimistic.