Sunday, December 13, 2009

Life gets busy and you forget to blog....

Well, we've not been very good at updating regularly, so here's a quick update on us. First off, I (Amber), am finally free of all disease/sickness! After being sick for seven weeks with various infections/not-so-fun secondary infections caused by antibiotic use, I now have a clean bill of health. Things are starting to settle down as I finished all of my classes Monday, and I only have about three more weeks of full-time work left...yay! So now I can finally put the laundry away that has been sitting in a basket for two weeks, and give my dirty dishes the attention they need:)

Jamie has only one week left of his first semester of medical school! I'm so proud of him! He's worked very hard and has done quite well in his classes. Even though he's so busy he still makes time to spoil me,(he's baking cookies for me right now...I love him!) One more week with his nose in the books, and then it's break time!

We had a very busy Thanksgiving holiday. Wed, we headed up north to Jamie's parents. We went to New Moon, played in the annual Turkey bowl (we were sore for 3 days after), and ate lots of delicious food! Then we headed to my folks in Norfolk. While in the 'fork, we visited with relatives, relaxed, shopped, and ate more food! It was a quick, but fun break.
Here's a picture from our Norfolk visit (excuse my poor-quality camera)






Yesterday we had our church Christmas party. Jamie and I serve as the ward choir directors/pianists, and for this year's party, the choir had to put on a half-hour performance. Jamie and I were quite nervous for this as neither one of us really knows how to direct a choir and our (aka-my) piano skills aren't necessarily the best. During one song Jamie started playing the 5th verse on the piano (there were only 4 verses in the song...) and for another song that I was leading I forgot to have everyone stand up, so everyone was staring at me for approximately 30 seconds as I tried to figure out why no one would sing. It went pretty good though, considering.

Well that's all for now. Time to eat cookies and view our annual showing of the movie Elf!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Goodbye Tempo! This car will be missed....

Never again shall you pass this way, did you live it wisely?



Greetings from Iowa on this first day in November! I have to explain the title of this post...when I (Jamie) was in high school I had a Spanish teacher, Senor Scollin, who would take his calendar each month and in his old man voice say, "Neeeeeva agaaaain shall you paaaas this way, did you live it wisely?" Then he would stare at us, shake the piece of calendar paper, then throw it in the garbage. He must have done a good job getting my attention, because every month I think of that phrase!
Anyway, things here in Des Moines have been going wonderful. This past week was super busy, but great. I had my second Anatomy exam and a Cell Biology exam a few days later, so I burnt a little bit of the midnight oil a few nights, but was very happy with the results. Amber is doing well, but has been fighting some cold for like a month. I don't think it is "Swine Flu", but I'll keep a look out for signs of curly tails sprouting! Other than trying to get better, Amber has been my sugar mamma these past few months. She still is working at the nursing home, and each shift gets a little more manageable with understanding all of the details of the job.
We had an exciting Halloween yesterday. In the evening we got the new hot rod ready (we drive a 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais...more to come on it later!) and we headed to the church for the Chili Cook-Off. We didn't enter a pot of chili this year, but we ate PLENTY of chili...I believe I ended up eating 5 bowls of chili and some big nut covered pumpkin bar! It was definitely a great night for some free food! After chili, Amber and I met up with our friends (Jesson, his wife Chelsie and Jeff) at Chipolte. Even though we had eaten Chipolte the night before, we came back the next night because they were offering the deal of a life. If you came into Chipolte dressed as a burrito, they would give you a free one! So, of course Amber and I were down for any type of free food, especially if it involved dressing up like some giant food object. We got some tinfoil, green stuffing paper and decked out in the burrito gear. As you can see from the pictures I was also sporting a very manly looking handle bar mustache. Between the plaid shirt, burrito suit and dirty mustache, I had one classy looking costume for Halloween! Needless to say Amber and I each enjoyed a giant burrito today (Fast Sunday) for our meal after breaking the fast!
Back to the car-First, we sold the Ford Tempo...I know (tear), but it was time. We made the transition a few weeks back when Amber swapped out the Tempo for the 1990 Oldsmobile Calais. Amber then posted last week the ad for the Tempo, and her father Larry had over 20 calls for it (it is a high demand car!). Within 3 hours the car sold, and just like that the days of the Tempo came to an end. Now back to the Calais. For some reason I can't remember the word "CALAIS" (pronounced "Ka Lay")...and one day my friend Jeff asks, "What kind of car do you have again?" I told him, "An Oldsmobile Cutlass Cialis!" He gave me an odd look and said, "Are you sure?" My wife was behind me shaking her head no, but of course I said, "Yeah, I know it is Cialis!" Anyway, my wife told me it was NOT Cialis and that it was Calais...at that moment I realized that Cialis is one of those great drugs for men who are having problems with, hmm, yeah, you get the picture! ;-) So now our car is known as Cialis!! It is a very fitting name for the car.
Anyway, I think that is the latest and greatest from Des Moines. Every day is just like a dream as I get to spend the day with the best person in the world! (Amber...just in case you had any doubts!). Life is great and we hope that all our friends out there are doing good! Until our next post, keep on living the dream!

Friday, October 23, 2009

A little about us

Well, after discussing starting a blog for quite some time, we decided it was finally time to take action....so here it goes. I guess I'll start with a little background info. Jamie and I began dating in 2006 while attending Brigham Young University, quickly fell in love, and decided to 'seal the deal' and were married May, 2007. Jamie graduated from BYU in '08 and I took a year off of school to work and be his suga' momma. We left Provo after graduation and headed to northern Iowa for a year where I attended nursing school and Jamie worked as a substitute teacher/"male secretary" (as he liked to call himself), and applied to medical schools. After careful consideration, we decided we wanted to stay close to our families in the Midwest and moved to Des Moines in July so Jamie could begin medical school at DMU. I have two semesters of nursing school left, and I'm currently working as an LPN at a nursing home.
So that's our story thus far. We'll keep you updated on the twists and turns as they come:)