Mrs. Captain Etc

While Blake and I are living with my parents, I've been taking advantage of this great opportunity to not have a job. It's been quite nice I must say, and I have managed to stay busy throughout it all. Blake likes to call me Captain Etc. This is what I've been up to over the past several weeks......I've been the maid (this includes doing everyone's laundry, having dinner hot and ready by the time people get home from work, basic tiding up of the house), dog walker, weed puller,family indexer, car washer, herbologist (if that's even a thing), errand runner, house hunter, outdoor painter, and stocking sewer (I volunteered to finish sewing 30 stockings to send to missionaries and troops in Iraq for this Christmas). Life has been busy, but fun!


This is a picture of a portion of my parents front yard. Blake and I love how green it is here even though we've had more rain then sun lately. Blake thinks Enumclaw is like a rainforest.


This is the infamous picnic table and benches that I've been working on for about 2 weeks now. They need about 3 coats of pain all over, and I haven't been too successful in squeezing those coats in between the rain storms.


These are my new basil and parsley plants. I've never planted herbs before and I'm so excited for them to grow. They've been getting plenty of water lately, all they need now is some sun.

"Joy In the Journey"

Things are finally starting to normalize in our lives. We're still living with my parents while we search for our own place to live. So in an attempt to familiarize ourselves with the surrounding Seattle areas we ventured out and looked at some homes for sale. After being gone for about 7 hours, and seeing about 5 homes, I came home tired and frustrated. I'm a girl and unfortunately I'm naturally the type of girl that likes new nice things. The downfall to this is I can rationalize why it's such a good idea to buy something nice and new versus something old and not as pretty. In the search for a place to live this isn't the best philosophy to have when you have "champagne taste on a Kmart budget" as my mom likes to call it. After the day we had and feeling really discouraged I decided to finish reading the June Ensign before I went to bed. Of course it had all the answers I needed to have spelled out to me.

This is beautiful! Jon Schmidt combined "Love Story" by Taylor Swift and "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay. He made this for his 7 year old daughter. Thanks Meg for letting me copy your idea.

WE MADE IT

Whether or not we were going to survive the last few weeks wasn't really questionable, but whether or not we would make it in one piece with our sanity in tact was very questionable.

First stop, St. George for Jared and Stacie's wedding. We were able to make there on Friday night and be there all day Saturday for all the festivities. It was a great weekend spending time with Blake's family and being there for Jared and Stacie's wedding. They're perfect for each other, and it's fun to have another addition to the family. (pictures to come)

Then Sunday morning off to Seattle with me driving one car, and Blake driving the Budget truck and pulling the other car. We managed to make it to Seattle on Sunday night/Monday morning. We pulled in I think around 12:30am. It was such a long drive, and by the time we pulled into my parents driveway we were beyond tired.

Blake flew out back to California bright and early Monday morning for more work training, while my mom helped me unpack the dreadful Budget truck and put all of our life belongings into a storage unit. We have so much stuff!

After the last few weeks of craziness Blake and I have decided that we can make it through anything. Over the course of the last few weeks there have been tears shed, sleep deprivation, long drives, eating on the go, living out of a suitcase, and not being mentally there (this has happened A LOT of the times!) We made it though and now the fun is just beginning; this new chapter in our lives has just begun. Stay tuned for more fun.....

The Joys of Provo, Utah

Since Blake and I are moving to Seattle next week we've been trying to do all the things in the area that we've wanted to do, but never have. My favorite thing I've been doing almost everyday lately is hiking the Y. The other day I went in the morning before work and it was so quiet and peaceful. I even saw 2 deer while I was up there. Today Blake and I took advantage of the Timpanogos Caves. We were able to meet up with the Chariton's and hike to the caves and then take the cave tour. It was so cool!

So last week I was driving to my last day of work, and I got to thinking about our upcoming move. Isn't it funny how we don't really appreciate the life we have until a change is in store and then we start to count all the great things that we do have in our life?! For instance I've gotten used to Provo and Utah in general, but at times I find myself still thinking that it doesn't feel like home. Now that we're leaving soon, I really think I'm going to miss Utah. I'm going to miss the beautiful mountains, the nice weather, the friendly people, all the fun things to do outside, our family that live in the area, the job that I did have, all of the wonderful friends we've made, and the great, little one bedroom apartment that we live in. On the other hand I am looking forward to moving closer to other family, being able to mountain bike and hike year round, the beautiful ocean, fresh seafood, the new place that Blake and I will live in, our future dog that we're going to get, and the great new job that Blake will have. We're finally moving on to the next stage of our lives. It's exciting, scary, and unknown. We'll keep you posted once when we get to Seattle.

Blake's Corner - My Blog within the Blog

I have decided to also participate in this "Blogging" stuff and I am calling it Blake's Corner. From time to time I will be posting the TOTALLY AWESOME things going on that Sheena might have left out. For example, I currently work as the Director of Sales at a web development company, Connect Networks. The experience has helped to enjoy some things I never quite saw myself doing.

One of those things occurred this past Friday. As a company we went and viewed the new Star Trek movie. I had "boldly never gone there before". I was actually quite surprised at how good the film turned out to be. I am not saying I am a converted "Trekkie", but I could feel the pull from Spock, Captain Kirk, and the rest of the crew.

I have included a picture that sums up the Star Trek experience below. For now, Live Long and Prosper.

Starving Student??? Why not!

Blake and I had so much fun yesterday. It started with Blake playing his intramural softball game, while I ran a few errands at record speed. We met back up to wash our cars inside and out-which they needed so badly. A quick shower after the car wash and then we decided to hike "Y" in Provo. I was telling Blake that there are a few things that we haven't done while living in Provo, and now that we're leaving I want to pack in as much of it as I can. So after the quick hike, which by the way I can't wait to do again before the move, we came home, changed and were off for a night of dinner and entertainment. So Blake bought a starving student card at the beginning of the year. It has all these great deals on it, but of course you usually have to spend money to save money. We have really enjoyed some of our date nights off this card, but last night was the best of all. We decided that we were going to collect on all the FREE stuff off this card. Blake called it "cheating the system" and that's exactly what we did. I wonder if anyone else does the same thing. We started by mapping out all the places we could take advantage of (we limited our collections to the Provo and Orem area only), and off we went. I've included some pictures of all the places we went. Check them out. It was a night of A LOT of food, and we had fun exploring around seeing some of these totally random places to eat. The whole night only cost us $7.99-we felt bad asking for waters at one place so we tipped them $1.00 and then we finished the night off with some mini golf which was buy one get one free. It was so much fun!!


Los 3 Amigos was our first stop for a free enchilada. They messed up on our order and added rice and beans-woops. Not our favorite enchilada-good thing it was free!


Next stop the Provo Towne Center Mall, for a free order of breadsticks at Villa Pizza food court.


This is the place we felt bad asking for waters and tipped them $1.00. It was totally worth the stop for a free large fry with fry sauce!


At Pier 49 we collected a cinnamon and sugar dessert pizza-pretty good but a little sweet.


At Blackjack Pizza we were able to get an 8inch cheese pizza.


Here at EZ Out Burger we collected a free hamburger!