Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with the Davenport family and Grandma Davenport's extended family. They asked us to bring a salad so I decided to make my layered Jell-o salad, and to make it in the cornucopia mold I have. It turned our beautiful.
























We stayed in St George at the Days Inn with our family, and had a ton of fun.

Our First Halloween

For our first Halloween together, we dressed up as Ghostbusters. On Friday we went to a Halloween institute dance. Our costumes were a big hit. They even played the Ghostbusters theme song. It was a blast. On Saturday we went to our ward Halloween party. Our costumes were a hit again. We had dinner (soup, rolls, and desserts) and then carved pumpkins. Jared made one into the ghostbusters logo, and I had one say "hi". Yeah Jared is the creative one not me. They both turned out pretty great though. On Halloween I dressed up for work. After Jared was home from school we frosted cookies and then put together goodie plates for some of our friends. We put our costumes on and delivered our treats, and went to Papa Murphey's to get a Jack-o-Lantern pizza along with cheese bread and cookie dough. While we ate pizza we watched "Donnie Darko" and turned off all the lights and lit some candles and plugged in our pumpkin lights. I have been sick with a nasty cold and worked at 4 am, so at 10:30 I was exhausted, even though I wanted to stay up and watch more movies.
Here are some pictures of us:




































We ended up buying some candy just to make sure we had something in case we got trick-or-treaters, but no one showed. I also went to Walmart and bought the 50% off candy so we have TONS.

It was a good Halloween. And looking forward to the many ahead.

6 MONTHS!!!

Today is our 6 month anniversary. This morning I have been thinking a lot about that special day in the temple. 6 months ago I met Jared at the Salt Lake Temple at 10 am. He walked through the doors to the lobby and my already super excited self got even more excited and happy. We gave each other a kiss, and my mom and I went to get me ready. All the temple workers just made me feel so calm and like a princess. After getting into my temple dress my mom left to be with the rest of our guests but not before saying "take your time" I sat in the dressing room listing to my heart beat in my ears. Finally a worker came and took me to meet Jared. We were taken to the Celestial room where we sat together. There is something special about that room. I will never forget how I felt with my wonderful husband for as long as I live. At 11:00 we spoke with our sealer before going into that beautiful sealing room. After entering that wonderful room we received such wonderful advice that I wont ever forget, and then Jared and I were married and sealed together for all eternity.

That day was the most wonderful day of my life. And I cannot believe that I am lucky enough to be married to my best friend and have the promise that we can be together forever if we keep our covenants that we made 6 months ago.

Well, Marisa keeps saying I'm going to post something, so I guess it's time I actually did.

School started a couple weeks ago. As always, I'm enrolled in mostly music classes. This semester, I'm finally finishing my theory courses, which I've been enrolled in almost every semester thus far. The last one is called 20th century theory and history, which includes studying the compositions of people like Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Cage. So, if you ever wondered what the musical equivalent is to Picasso and Escher and such, look up those guys. It's interesting, but not all the music is exactly pleasant to listen to. I'm also taking instrumental methods, which teaches me how to be a teacher, or more specifically, a band director. I'm taking Woodwinds and learning to play the clarinet. In Fundamentals of Conducting, I'm learning...the fundamentals of conducting! What a shock! I'm taking band and jazz and I've apparently been recruited to the orchestra as well. On top of all that playing, I'm in Brass studio and I'm taking private lessons, and trying to get in two hours of practice a day. Just so I don't have a overly musical schedule (yeah right) I'm also taking Education Psychology. That's a nice break. We read our assignment, the professor shows us a slide show that is word for word out of the book, then, if that wasn't enough monotony, the slides are all on-line so we can review them whenever we want. The best part is a lot of it is common sense. I usually just do homework for other classes when I'm there, but at least it's something non-musical in my schedule.

Outside of school, I'm currently employed by two different departments at the school and Vector Marketing. Holding three jobs is fairly easy when you only have a few hours a week. My most recent new job is with the school's Convocation Series, a series of lectures, motivational speakers, and performers that come every Tuesday at SUU. I work for two hours as an usher. It's surprisingly fun and I've so far met Senator Harry Reid and I'll get to meet a couple other cool speakers this year. My other job with the school is as a janitor. I'm just on call for any jobs that someone can't make it in to work. Right now it's slow, but once the weather and the homework load picks up, it'll pick up. The last job I have is as a knife salesman. It's pretty self explanatory. I find people that might like great knives, and I show them what I've got, and people buy them. So, if you want some knives, you know who to call. I also do bridal registries. Anyways, my other source of income is scholarships and such. I actually got paid this semester to go to school, between a pell grant and a music scholarship, I got a dollar and twenty five cents back, that of course went towards books.
One cool discovery we had a week or so ago was the T. H. Bell Teaching Incentive Loan. It's basically where the program gives education majors money while they're in school, and instead of paying back this loan, all you have to do is teach in Utah for as many semesters as you received funding for. I applied and was approved for one of the 8 positions available in the SUU education department. So, now I'm getting a couple extra grand a semester and I'm officially staying in Utah after graduation for at least a couple years.
Anyways, that's my classes and jobs and such. It's looking like a good semester, and it'll be the best semester ever simply because I'll be with Marisa from the start. I'm looking forward to a semester where I have a beautiful, amazing, wonderful friend to share all the ups and downs with. Hopefully it mostly ups, but we'll see.

Quick Update....

Jared started school 3 weeks ago. He's taking 16 credits this semester, which is less than what he was taking while we were engaged and newly married. Jared will be posting on how school is going and such things soon... I hope... :)

I recently cut my hair, and I absolutely love it. It is way short now, and is very low maintenance which is perfect for me. A very quick brush through is all it needs most days now. It's great, especially with my new position at work. I no longer am what they called the "prep girl". I now am opening and cooking breakfast most days of the week. This means getting to work by 4 am. On the plus side I am home at noon and pretty much have the rest of my day to do whatever, which usually includes lots of time with Jared. YAY!!! It also means that I get every other Sunday off.

Jared applied for this Terrell H Bell Teaching Incentive Loan, and....... WE GOT IT! Jared knows more about the details of it than I do so I will make sure he includes that. But basically we are getting money if he teaches in Utah after he graduates. It is going to be such a blessing. I know I am very grateful for it.

Nothing else has really happened in our lives that I can think of at the moment. But we are doing well and are still very much in love with each other and so VERY happy. :)

News

Well about 2 weeks ago we purchased a new vehicle. Grandpa and Grandma Wonnacott moved into an active adult community (assisted living center) and were needing to start getting rid of some of their possessions that they will no longer be needing. One of the many things was their 2001 Ford F-150 pickup. Jared has driven that truck more than grandpa has most likely. Jared drove that truck while he lived with them last summer, and frequently borrowed it so he could come see me while we were dating. We looked at our finances and budget and decided that it would be a good investment, and something we could do. So we will be making payments for the next like 20 months on the truck. This way grandma and grandpa will be able to get a little bit of an income every month, and we get another vehicle. We also wont have to put it on our insurance until October, and wont have to register it until March.

This last weekend was a fabulous weekend for us. We went to St. George Friday and came home Saturday night. We helped move grandpa and grandma into their new place most of Friday afternoon. We met with Uncle Doug (Jared's uncle on his mom's side) and did a knife demonstration. Jared is still doing the job with Cutco, and doing fairly well with it. (I will try and get Jared to post sometime about how the job is going.) We then dropped off our things at Grandma and Grandpa Davenport's (Jared's mom's parent's) and let them know our plan for the night. We then went on a shopping spree to Kohl's and Bed Bath & Beyond. After shopping we went to Red Lobster for dinner. They have this great deal going on through the end of July, you get a 4 course meal for $15. It was so delicious. After dinner we went to the park that is really close to the St George Temple. We walked over to the gazebo/pavilion and talked. (Jared can be so romantic sometimes.) We walked through the park some more, then drove back to the grandparent's. Saturday we woke up and went to see if the Wonnacott's (not us obviously) needed anymore help moving, but everything was all done so we just visited. We then went to the temple, which was amazing as always. we love going to the temple together. After we got done at the temple, we hurried and changed then went to see Harry Potter after stopping to get some pizza from our stake. The movie was AWESOME! Overall it was a wonderful weekend.

This week has been a big week for Jared. It's push week with Cutco and so he is trying to get as many appointments as he can. There is a conference next Tuesday and Wednesday in Pocatello Idaho, and he will be gone overnight. We both aren't looking forward to our first night away from each other since we have been married. It's funny we spend over a year not sleeping with each other, and now we can't imagine not sleeping next to each other.

Next weekend we will be heading up to Salt Lake. I am looking forward to going "home" and being able to see my dogs again. I'm going through withdraws. Plus we will be going to an old friend of mine's wedding reception. He and his new wife both go to SUU and will be living here in Cedar. It will be nice to have some more married friends.

As for me, I am working 35+ hours a week at Maverik. I finally am able to make it to my church meetings. They had been making me work Sunday's 6-2, but now I will be working 4-10. I will still have to work Sunday's but I can make it to my meetings most if not every week. Every week I have Friday and Saturday off, so I get one full day to spend with Jared. I am going to start working out. I have unfortunately gained some weight and am going to work on slimming back down.

Basically, we are doing great and loving our life together.

Thinking of how different things could have been, if I hadn't made the decisions I had, specifically the decision I made to marry my husband in the house of the lord. Anyone who knows me/us, knows we were engaged for nearly 8 months before we were married (not the typical length of an engagement for a LDS couple). (The details of why it took so long do not matter, thanks to the atonement) However, we could have been married civilly in November, on a date that we had talked about getting married, making it a 3 month engagement and then be sealed 1 year later. But, we decided that we wanted to be sealed in the temple no matter how long it took us to get there. We didn't want to take the chance of something happening to one of us before we were sealed or having a child not born in the covenant.
We both had and currently have strong testimonies of the sealing power and of the temple in general. We knew we needed our family to be sealed right from the start, and that it was either the temple or not at all. A lot of my testimony of the temple was because of events in my life where it was questionable whether the family would be together after this life. And that scared me to death. Hence why I wasn't going to end up anywhere but the temple. I'm not sure of the details of Jared's testimony but I KNOW he had a strong testimony of it and heartily agreed that the only place we would marry would be the temple.
We had lots of people ask and wonder why we had/were having such a long engagement, but it didn't matter to me what people said or thought. I knew we were doing the right thing by doing it right the first time.
Thankfully through the help of family, friends, and church leaders as well as leaning on each other for support we made it to the temple. I can't imagine having done it any other way. And I am so very grateful that we made it despite the challenges we had to overcome to get there. It was SO worth it, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Because of that one decision, I know that Jared will be by my side even after death. I have also received SO many blessings, especially from being able to attend the temple.