September and October Update

So I meant to do a blog post last month but it kept getting later and later until it seemed like this made more sense haha.

Adam and Ashley: We’ve been doing pretty good these last couple months. We have been trying to get back into a normal routine at home and with finances es but something always seems to come up like a car needing to be fixed or we get sick. But at least we’re trying! We are enjoying our ward (local LDS church congregation) and our callings in it. I have been doing cub scouts which is fun but can be stressful trying to contain a bunch of 8 year old boys haha. Adam got called as a Sunday school teacher for gospel doctrine and he’s been rocking at it! Not surprising as he’s a born teacher. Adam has continued loving his job and I’ve been finding things to keep me busy at home with the babywearing group I started, meeting new friends, and helping to babysit a friend’s little boy.

Eli: has exploded with language! He is so smart and constantly learns new words. He has also started combining words to form simple sentences. It has helped so much to have him better at communication. He’s also got a lot more obedient which I think has stemmed from better communication. Some of his favorite things to do are play with toys, run around the house with daddy, and clean up. He loves to try to help with chores and he’ll often pick up things that need to be thrown away and say “closet?” (The garbage can is in the pantry). He loves playing with other kids and is still obsessed with going outside. Also, he is officially bottle weaned!!!! This has been a long time coming. He would need a bottle of milk before nap and nighttime but now he will go to bed without it which is such a relief! Now the next big transition will be to a toddler bed which I’m not looking forward to.

Special things that happened!
- We visited Adam’s brother and his wife in Wyoming on Labor Day weekend to see their newborn daughter be blessed! It was nice seeing his side of the family and hold a sweet snuggly baby :)

snuggling that sweet niece

We went to a park in Cheyenne and Eli loved the giant train!

Cousins!

- I turned 26!

-Halloween! We just went trick or treating at the building adam works at on BYU-Idaho campus. Eli loved it once he realized he got candy. He started off by opening and eating the candy immediately after collection but eventually he realized he was going to get lots more. He thoroughly enjoyed it and now we are at the “hide all the candy and give it out one piece at a time” stage haha

October Update

Time for another update!

Adam: He has been hard at work with his Evaluation class, the class he teaches, his prospectus, and applying to lots of jobs. He got his first rejection but we are still very hopeful :) There are lots of options out there for him and there continues to be new jobs added. In his spare time, he has been playing Orem city league Ultimate and intramural kickball. He has playing on some intramural team pretty much every semester he's been at BYU and in his last one, they finally won!! If you win an intramural tournament, you get bragging rights and a snazzy t-shirt. He was so happy coming home wearing it :)

Ashley: I have been very much enjoying the fall weather and I try to take Eli out at least once every day which he loves. Earlier in the month, I helped organize activities for International Babywearing Week for our local babywearing group. It has been so much fun helping teach people how to properly wear their baby and all the benefits of it. I've also been trying to get out of our rut of usual meals we plan. Adam and I came up with a fun idea for menu planning that has really helped. He comes up with the protein, starch, and cooking method while I come up with a recipe to fit it. It has worked really well so far and it is fun to experiment with cooking :)

Eli: is 14 months old now! He loves being chased and tickled, playing fetch, walking outside, going on the slide at the park, and watching mommy and daddy cook. He has 7 teeth now and can both climb up and back down from the couch. We are trying to teach him the signs for "more" and "all done" which sometimes he does but I don't know if he knows what it means. He doesn't sign it but he definitely knows the sign for milk. If I do that, he walks over to the kitchen and waits for me to get a bottle of milk. Then he promptly walks to the rocking chair in his bedroom knowing that it's nap time. It's so cute :) He doesn't talk much other than "mama", "dada", and "yah".

Halloween and my sister visiting!

This last week my sister Jessica came to visit!! We had lots of fun going to Cornbelly's on Saturday. I was expecting just the usual corn maze and pumpkin patch but it was like a carnival! So much to see and do :) The corn maze was shaped like the Peanuts characters and they had a bingo game throughout it. On Monday, we hiked the Y which Adam and I haven't done since freshman year. It was cool to say that we did it especially since it'll probably be the last time before we move. Then that evening Eli went trick or treating for the first time! He eventually got the concept of walking to people's doors but he kept wanting to take the candy out of his bucket and hold it in his hands haha. He didn't last very long but it was fun :) On Tuesday, we also went to the outlets in Park City and then lastly to Temple Square before dropping Jess off at the airport. I'm so glad she could come even for a short time and I hope some day we will all live close together again :)

Our October

Updates
Adam: He continues to be an incredible husband, dad, and student. Sadly, he decided to withdraw from his family history course so that he would have more time to work on his graduate courses and his master's project. On the 11th, he went to Salt Lake City and presented with his team at the West Coast Conference for the Association for Asian Studies. Also, he got officially accepted to present on a online education panel at the AAS's national conference in the spring! He also got a scholarship for next semester which will be a HUGE help since I will no longer be working then. He is such a hard worker.

Ashley: I'm still working for Wasatch Mental Health and enjoying it for these last few months. I am getting more used to being a mom which has helped my PPD. I still am getting treatment and slowly improving. There are still bad days but hopefully I'll feel closer to my normal self soon. I'm used to feeling the anxiety but the depression is so new to me that it is difficult to deal with sometimes. But as Eli grows, my strength and love for him increases.

Eli: He is now two months old and a very happy baby. I think the Lord knew that we needed to be blessed with a good baby at this time. He is now just over 11 lbs, fitting into his cloth diapers, gets the hiccups ALL the time, and smiles lots. He is just starting to laugh more and occasionally grab or wack at toys. He also is getting better and better at head control. He loves sitting up on the couch, sucking on his fist, and having us talk to him. He's very social but is also content to just lay on a blanket and look around (a perfect mash-up of his parents' personalities). He enjoys when we sing to him and smile at him. We love him so much and are looking forward to all the new things he will learn.

Special Events
Blessing: Eli was blessed on the 12th. We were so lucky to have Adam's parents, Adam's sister Sharon and her family, and my sister Jessica all in town. Sadly, my dad came down with shingles right before they were going to leave to come down here so my parents weren't able to be there. They were sorely missed but hopefully it won't be too much longer before they get to meet their second grand-baby. We had a fun filled weekend spending time with both sides of the family. We hadn't seen Sharon and her family in over a year and were so excited to meet our newest nephew. All the kids enjoyed meeting Eli as well. Eli was a good sport for the blessing and the pictures afterwards. He slept all through church and then woke up happy for the pictures and just started to fuss when we were finishing. After the blessing, we all went to Adam's cousin's new house to chill and party the rest of the day.

Halloween: We had a pretty low key Halloween, not doing too much on the actual day except playing games with friends and watching Hocus Pocus. We did enjoy going to the church Halloween party! I'm always amazed at how creative people get with couples and family costumes. We were Charlie Brown and Snoopy last year and we decided to use them again. Funnily enough, we were trying to get pregnant this time last year and talked about that if we had a baby next year, we could do a Woodstock costume. So this year, I made one and it turned out super cute. I used every bit of the minimal craftiness I have to make the hat. He looked so adorable :)

Well until next time!

<3 Ashley

P.S. I hope no one on facebook minds the numerous baby pictures :)

Fall semester

Merry (nearly) Christmas!

We have had a good fall and seem to finally be getting into the groove of Adam being in grad school now that this semester is ending. Here are some updates:

School and Work
Adam's last day of finals is tomorrow and I'm sure he is counting down the hours until freedom. He has enjoyed his classes immensely and has got a better idea of what he can do in this field and what he wants to do after graduation. Today was his last day of his class that he teaches as well! He has loved teaching and is very excited for next semester now that he has a foundation to work off of and an idea of what works and what doesn't. He is also finishing up the BYU Online class he TAs for. He had an exciting moment last week when he got to give a presentation about the BYU Online class to the whole Humanities department at BYU. He has been with the course for 4 out of the 5 semesters so he was able to give a lot of insight about the benefits of BYU Online and what they are looking to improve on. He hopes that this will lead to a Master's project for him. The Humanities department has 7 GE courses that they offer so he is offering himself as an Instructional Designer to get more online classes available. They were all extremely interested in his ideas which is great because this would be the ultimate job experience!

I am very ready for Adam to have a break from school and luckily next semester should be a little bit lighter. I still work at Wasatch Mental Health and I love it! I especially love my coworkers and any time we get to do a clinic party. They definitely have turned into a second family for me :) I have been trying to keep busy since Adam is unavailable so often so I have been doing lots of reading and made a blanket!

I had a fun time doing it and will probably do more. I will have lots of other projects in the future that I'm excited about and will give updates later.

Holidays
We had a low key but fun Halloween this year. We went to a corn maze with my sister and her family which was lots of fun! My nephew Anders led all of us through the maze while running wild. He quite enjoyed it :)

We also actually dressed up for our Halloween ward party! We were Charlie Brown and Snoopy :)

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun this year even though we didn't travel. I of course forgot to take any pictures though xP. My sister Stephanie and I did the meal together and just divided up the dishes. She got to make the turkey and I did most of the side dishes which included making stuffing for the first time! We accidentally made a TON but Adam didn't mind because he loved it so much :) We also got to Facetime with my family which was great. Then on Friday, we decorated for Christmas and Adam's brother Seth and his new wife Sabrina came to stay with us for the weekend! It was so much fun having them here since this was the first time us being with them since they got married. We got to play lots of games, go to the temple together, and on Sunday we got to go up to  the house of Adam's other brother and sister-in-law up in Lehi to have sundaes. We were so grateful to spend that time with them.

We are very excited for Christmas as my sister Jessica will be flying in from Washington! This will be the first Christmas I've spent with both of my sisters since we got married. We are looking forward to it :)

We love you all and hope you are having a great Christmas season!

<3 Ashley

This Crazy Semester

Hi everyone!

So I know its been forever since we last blogged so I thought I'd post one now that I have a tad bit of spare time :)

This semester has been insane! This came as quite a shock to us as last year we were going to school full time, working part time, working in the temple, and I was volunteering at the Utah State Hospital. Now, its just school, work, and Adam's ORCA project, yet we don't seem to have enough hours in a day (or especially days in the weekend). I know the Lord definitely helped us out last year because of our work in the temple. Adam is taking 12 credits this last semester of his with two Digital Humanities courses to finish up his minor, a class on the history of WWII, and a 300-level Spanish class (which he hates). He will be graduating at the end of this semester in December, after which he will find work and apply to grad school. He will also be ending his work as being a TA which is hard especially because he has to do all of his normal grading in addition to helping hire and train his replacement. In addition to all of this, he is finishing up his ORCA project. His thesis for this project has evolved into being about Molly Brown (from the Debbie Reynolds movie) and how media and memory affect preservation of history. He has worked insanely hard on this especially in the past month. He finished his first draft which he will edit and then submit for publication. He also got specially invited to present his project at a symposium put on by his college. He did amazing at his presentation and had quite a few people come and watch it just for him :) Afterwards, the organizers, student presenters, and key note speakers went out to dinner at the Bombay House. They were nice enough to include me as well :)

Here is the poster with his name on it that was on quite a few bulletin boards :)

As for me, I have been kept very busy with work and school. My secretary job has changed quite a bit because we transitioned the testing service I help run to being administered online. In some ways this has made my life easier and in others, not so much. We still have to spend quite a bit of time ironing out kinks in the system but it will get better. I am taking 15 credits this semester with Life-Span Development, Behavioral Neurobiology, Social Psychology, Current Social Problems, and Child Psychopathology. This is the first time I've taken all major (or rather major + social work prerequisites). It has made it so that often a few of my classes are talking about the same things at the same time. I have enjoyed my classes this semester except for this last week when I had a midterm in every class all in the space of 8 days. But I got through thank goodness! Now there are no tests until finals week. After this semester, I decided that I will only go part time school because I only need two classes to graduate. I am considering taking an additional job at a residential treatment center to gain experience for a master's in social work program. I am looking forward to the idea of only taking two classes though!

Although life has consisted mainly of school and work, we have been able to do a few other things. Adam promised me a long time ago (either while we were dating or engaged) that he would take me to a dance. So, we decided to go to BYU's homecoming with a couple of our friends :) I love dancing and it was fun to have Adam join in as well.

Us at the dance :) the theme was Old New York and they had a live swing band

We also got a chance to celebrate Halloween a tiny bit by carving pumpkins :) We didn't do much else because this was at the time that Adam had to complete his first draft of his ORCA paper.

Our pumpkins that we carved :) Adam's=a football player, mine=happy vampire

We are enjoying our new ward and have finally received callings!! I say "finally" because we did not have callings in our old ward where we lived for a year and a half and therefore didn't get to know anybody. Adam is a home-teaching district supervisor and I am a Relief Society instructor. I haven't taught yet but Adam has gotten to know quite a few people through his calling. We are leaning towards having Adam do grad school at BYU so that we don't have to move and can stay in the same ward :) He is looking at a couple programs at BYU (Instructional Psychology & Technology, and Comparative Studies) as well as grad programs at WA State, University of OR, and University of UT. We will know our options next year :) We are excited for the upcoming holidays where we'll be going up to Idaho Falls for Thanksgiving and then staying home for Christmas for the first time. We're very nervous about all of the changes coming after this semester but we have faith that all will work out for the best :)

We love you all and will hopefully write a little sooner next time :)

<3 Ashley