A brief of 2011 (our Christmas letter)

Ryan and I have been living in Boise for about seven months. We really like here and the neighborhood that we are in.

We like our ward a lot, and have met a lot of great families here. We are currently teaching the 10 and 11 year olds. I have the 10 year old girls and Ryan the 11 year old boys. There was one boy in my class but they moved him to Ryan’s class cause they felt bad leaving him with the class of mostly girls. I look forward to next year, we will be teaching the eight year olds together.

This year I learned how to grow a garden. My father in-law Mike has been staying with us when he is up here running the business (more about that in a moment). Since he was here with us I had the chance to learn how to grow a garden from him. I had quiet the abundance of green beans and cherry tomatoes. I know to plant less of those next time around hehe.

Mike stays with us when he comes up here. He is part owner in the granite company that Ryan works at (hence how Ryan got the job offer). He still spends time down in Vegas because my mother in-law is still finishing up her masters degree down there. So until she is done he spends some weeks in our third bedroom.

Ryan has been taking a break from school for a bit till he gains residency and learned the business more. He plans to attend BSU in the Fall.

We're going to have a little one.

So originally I wanted to wait a year and Ryan wanted to wait two years. I kinda didn't want to wait that long but we decided on two but then we had a roller-coaster of insurance no insurance. Well more so work didn't supply it so we paid for it ourselves. Darn economy. Well when we decided that we would be moving up to Idaho it was time to start a family. I thought we might get insurance pretty soon. Well we had to wait 6 months and then one more month. I was SO done playing the waiting game. Many people would tell me oh enjoy your time together because once you have a little one you won't have much alone time. For this baby lover I just wanted a kid. I want to be able to hold that little baby more than just for a little bit before it goes home to it's mom. I want to see them have a mixture of our personalities and facial features. I am yearning to hold a little one of my own. I look forward to teaching them.

So we finally decided it was time to start our family. I kinda had a feeling that I might be prego from what I was reading on the internet and so I decided to take and EPT a day early cause I read that they are sensitive enough. Luckly I have not had much of the symptoms (or should I say the worst one) :-D I do sometimes feel slightly light headed but once I eat I'm good. The first week after I found out I definitely felt hungry more often and more tired. Also when I moved certain ways I had a tinging of pain but not bad at all. It's crazy how once you find out you are already considered four weeks along. Now I am 6 weeks and I am pretty sure I wake up every night to go to the bathroom. In the evenings is when I feel the most tender. I like to take baths but I don't like putting the strain on my tummy when I wash my hair so I think it is showers for a while now.

First Snow in Boise

So last night we heard on the news that it was going to possibly snow. While I was at play date (I got to socialize with the girls even though I don't have kids yet hehe) I glanced out the window and sure enough it did.

It's not a lot but it's still fun. Though I'm still not looking forward to when it sticks :-/ I still like the idea of drive to the mountains to get to the snow if you want to go tubing, not having it in your front yard.

Mom & Dad's Visit

Last week mom said that they may come and visit me. Uncle Bishoff was being called as a bishop in Ely so they invited Mom and Dad to come to their Sacrament meeting. They decided to make the extra drive up since they would already be about three and a half hours in my direction.

Yay! It was fun to have Mom and dad come visit me. I got to show them Boise and how beautiful it is up here. We went to the shop first so that they could see what Ryan does.



We went to a farmers market, Picked up some corn, peaches and apricots. Yum! Then we went for a picnic. The weather was so nice.


Later Dad wanted to go to Cabela's (outdoor/camping store). He didn't know that there was one in Vegas until we were already there and I told him but we still had fun walking around in there. Then for dinner I decided that we should pull out our Dutch Oven since we hadn't used it yet. We bought it just before I moved up here since we decided we should have our own. We made BBQ chicken and corn. Mike took over since he teased that Ryan wasn't jumping in and cooking. He started to put oil inside the oven and then set it on the charcoals. I didn't know what he was doing and tried to say aren't we going to put the chicken in yet? He teased is it ready yet? I didn't understand that he was gong to fry it until he set it right in the oil. I thought maybe he was trying to season it like we had to season the grill when I first built it. I was thinking it said it was already seasoned. Well fried BBQ chicken was yummy.

We have cooked quite a few times outside since Mike helped us decide to buy a charcoal grill instead of a gas grill. He said they taste better and are less expensive to cook with.

Starting a Garden

I wanted to write all of this down so that I remember how to do this later. Also I am so excited about all of this that I kind of hope that this will help get my sisters excited to try for themselves.

First if your dirt was as bone dry as my dirt was you need to really soak up the dirt and then rototill it once it has dried up to be moist and not sopping wet.

When you bury you plant dig a deeper hole and put a handful of steer manure in, plant, bury, and then sprinkle a little more manure on top. With tomatoe plants you break off the lowest limbs and then bury the plant so they are now under ground.

Water about every three days with a soaker hose for about an hour or so. That allows the water to soak deeper into the ground. Water with miracle grow about every 7 days until they are within a month of crop to induce growth.

I have cherry tomatoes!

I have been working on the website

so I haven't been paying too much attention to the garden so these little babies have really popped up without me noticing them. All of the tomatoe plants have had blossoms for a while but none have created tomatoes just yet till now :-D


And I have some blossoms on this green bean plant! Going to be watching it closely to see it produce some green beans.


My chives and carrots are doing good.


All of my pepper plants have peppers now!


Are these green been leaves pretty or what. I love them!
My Orange pepper plant with the biggest peppers.

Romaine Lettuce Yum!

This leaf is having a little trouble.... I don't know what it is or if it's something that I need to do to help it.
And last but not least the whole garden. Mike bought some wiring to build these cages for around the tomato plants. Ryan helped him build them so that they fit inside the tires. These will help hold up the branches of the tomato plants since they will get heavier when they have large tomatoes on them.

I have Peppers Growing!

Mike brought up some tires to put around the tomato plants. The black line you see running through the plants is my sweater hose. It kind of acts like a bubbler in a way but it looks like it is sweating from tons of tiny little pores throughout the lenth of the hose.



My chives and carrots are definitely getting a lot thicker :-D



This pepper has what you call white disease hehe j/k. It is the stuff I put on it to keep the ants from eating the leaves. There are three little peppers growing already! :-D Yaay!

Our New Ward

We have been enjoying out new ward a lot. There is diversity in ages unlike our last ward. Ryan would always tease that we needed to check pulses in our last ward since there were a lot of older people in our ward. So far we have met a lot of new people all the time we have people coming up and talking to us.

When we knew we were going to move up here I teased I didn't want to be put into primary again since I wanted to get to know the ward better and sooner then I did in the El Camino Ward. I immediately got put into the primary and didn't really get to know too many people for a long time.

The first week I got to go to the new ward the kids in primary were singing in Sacrament meeting and I got the feeling that I was going to miss primary. Little did I know that I was going to be back into primary. They called me first, and then Ryan the week after. I am the Valliant 10 and He is the Valliant 11 teacher. His class is all boys and mine is all girls. I would have had one of his boys, but the teachers felt bad for the boy being the only one. So they put him with the older class since they are still on the same book anyway. They called me to be the teacher of this class since there is a girl that has autism in my class. It is kind of nice knowing that I was called for my patience since I've always been told I have patience but it really feels good to know that my Heavenly Father sees and Admires my patience. ;-D I really like the Idea also that Ryan is in the same book as me because now we can prepare our lessons together. I like this cause we really are terrible are FHE and this can be our FHE study together.

I really have only been recently introduced to Autism. I've known it was out there but I have only interacted with people with it in the last year and half. Daphne was the first. She was a sweetheart. Very quiet but was bright and mostly liked to play on her own. The other girl in Safekey was way different, very active, and sometimes loud. The last was J.J. he was not very talkative but active and liked to be around. though since this was at church it was more difficult to work with him since we wanted him to be quiet while we tried to teach the other children. It was very difficult. Sydni is much more mellow at church. Though Sis. Swenson makes it sound like that is because she is one a new medication than she was before and this one seems to be working well for her.

Garden Update

The very tiny little specs to the farthest left is my romaine lettuce, next you will see some smaller leaves and that is my row of green beans. In the third row you will see my peppers and broccoli. I planted two red, one orange and one green. The farther part of that row is my broccoli. The next too very faint rows are my chives and carrots. You'll only see them if you enlarge the image by double clicking on it. Then the last row in the back is my tomatoes. The two closer ones are cherry tomatoes and the farther are large round tomatoes.

When you enlarge the image you will see some grass in the lower right hand corner. I had about that thickness of grass throughout my whole garden. It was a pain in the but to go out there and pick it all especially around my romaine lettuce, carrots and chives since I didn't want to pull them up with the grass. Luckily I haven't had too many weeds just yet.... cross my fingers. Today I just found one of my least favorite weed pop up near my carrots. :-( Another plus to having this garden is that it gets me outside of the house though I haven't started work yet and I'm getting some color to my whitey self haha.

Here are the little bitty romaine lettuce. I was getting a little nervous if they would come since these the carrots and chives took a bit longer to germinate than the green beens. Also a guy at Fred Meyer said that they don't like the warmer weather when germinating. At first I thought that they might be more weeds since I was getting a TON of grass growing in. But as I let them grow I noticed that they were definitely in a row and not scattered everywhere like the grass was. I'm happy since this will more likely be one of the things I eat more of.

My happy and sad broccoli plants. I had an ant infestation on my broccoli plants. They were living in the root of the four plants on the left. When I look close to the ground I can see that the ants were eating the stems also. I put the chopsticks in the ground next to them and a twisty around them to hold them up in last attempt to save them but I'm pretty sure I will be pulling them. :-( Though I am grateful that I still have four healthy plants :-D

The green bean process. First we have the bean on the left that still has his head stuck in the ground. That's how they start. It's quite funny to me. Then one they pop up I notices that they had two things to the side of them that remind me of cashew peanut halves.

This is my orange pepper. He's already got some blooms on him, so maybe I'll start to have some peppers growing soon.

The little grass in front is my carrots and the very fine grass in the back is my chives. :-D

This picture is for Tara. This is her favorite flower, I think, I know that she likes them though. I got lucky to have them in my front yard though. One time I was watching Jaiden and Rylan when I was their nanny and she had these in a flower pot from Pete. They were gorgeous but I couldn't figure out what was this funny pee scent coming from. Since the boys were still in diapers I thought it was that. Well I figured it out these blooms may be beautiful but I don't care for their scent :-D So I'm glad to have them outside.

Here is the rest of that clump of bushes waiting to bloom.

Some of my strawberry plants. I have alot of these in my planter. It's fun. Though I realized that you need alot of these plants in order to get even a few strawberries. I still need to pick more of the surrounding plants. I'm not sure what they are but they're crowding my strawberries. I even had quite a few onions in my planter area though I plucked most of then by now since their leaves were looking dead. Though most of them out since I don't really eat a lot of onions but I did keep a few in my fridge.

More pretty flowers. I have rose and flower galore in my yard.

And another set of those pink flowers waiting to bloom.

Fourth of July

We made hamburgers in our bitty George Forman that my mom gave us for Christmas. It's small so it was only able to cook one patty at a time but we didn't want to quite buy a bbq grill just yet. And Ry will probably want to look up a good model on the internet too. He likes researching things before we purchase :-D

Here are some fruit pizza's that I made. I bought the sugar cookies to make things more simple. The frosting is a pkg of cream cheese and 1/3 c. sugar and I used my egg slicer to slice the strawberries. I've been eyeing these kind of platters for some time and decided to buy one for now and buy more later.

These are blue Kool-Aide star ice cubes on a red drink :-D

I will add more pictures soon since I was able to capture a few fireworks while sitting on my couch.

Thunderstorm Last Night

I've been kinda wanting to try and catch some lightning with my camera again some time soon but I didn't know when I would be able to do it. Well We had quite the storm last night Ry mentioned that maybe I pull out my camera. Then when I started to go scrounging for the bits and pieces tripod, locking cable and stuff like that he thought that I might miss it. I didn't care I was going to at least attempt. We'll I didn't and got some good ones :-D

There was one really loud pop right when it flashed. We knew that one was right on top of us. It took me back to when we went to Logandale's Red Rock. That time I wan't to take pictures too but I was too afraid to even stand up. It was crazy the thunder was right after every flash we knew it was on top of us then.

Not starting work just yet.

Ryan started right away since they needed him four weeks before I got here. Things are still getting settled at the office for the news plans to fall into place. until Mike got here and was able to change things I was not needed at the office. So I am at my new home settling where things should go.

Though the second day Ryan was at work I was SO in the mood for making some homemade bread. I kinda have a goal of doing better at cooking while I'm up here. Well bread was on my mind unboxing had to wait haha. I made home made bread and scones all on my own from grinding the wheat to frosting the scones for the first time. I have made home made bread quite a few times before. I even tried to teach Sheree how to do it one time. I think she requested to do it more so cause she felt like eating it haha. But never before have I done every step all on my own. I'm pretty proud of myself. Usually mom steps in and tries to help, thinking that I don't quite know how to do every step. I think she forgets how many times I had made it with her, and even a few times with out her.

I've been pretty good at putting together some better meals with a little more than something I pull out of the freezer and warm up.

Part of me is wondering if I am starting work next week but I kind don't think so.... we'll see but I'm not too worried about it since I have enjoying a little down time.


In these pictures it may look like Ryan did all of the work, but don't let that fool you. We did equal share. I started pulling weeds while he mowed the lawn and then he came to help. He did the shoveling to loosen up the dirt while I plucked them and stomped off the dry clumps of dirt. Near the end I gave up on getting the dirt off and was throwing it away haha. I was going to replace it better dirt anyway right? :-D




I am also looking forward to starting our garden. Ryan and I had pulled up more weeds I have in my life. I hope to not have to them like that again. I learned by pulling the little ones in the front yard are not so bad at the ones that were in the pace of my garden. When they are small they are so much easier to pull out. You barely have to tug on them and they plop right out. Now as for the the huge ones we brought out we had to loosen the dirt below. It was a lot of work.

On Friday we did a little shopping and Ryan wanted to stop in Best Buy for upgrading his windows operating system on his laptop. He doesn't care much for vista. Well we walked out without that and something else Ryan had his eye one for quite some time. He's been wanting a Mac. Well we ended up deciding that it was about the same price as on the online store I like. So now we are a Mac owner. It's a little funny going back and forth though right now since I haven't gotten my programs on it just yet, the keyboard commands are different, also the sensitivity of my mouse old is way better then the Mac mouse. Though I do love the Magic Mouse scrolling capability.

This image right here is why I think that one day we go looking for a house I want one in this same area. There is grass and trees along a lot of the roads.

Ryan came to pick me up

Ryan made his trip down to come get me. He drove down on the 9th. He brought the UHaul for the 3rd trip of stuff to come up since it was cheaper round trip as opposed to one way. We picked up the car trailer on the 11th and loaded up the truck with more stuff. We were taking up a few last minute things of ours which barley filled it at all and then some more stuff from the cedarview house. That stuff will go into storage once Mike gets up here.

Girls Night and Goodbyes

I had a girls night on the first of June. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed hanging out with my sisters, mom, aunt, grandma and two friends. I wanted to have a girls night since I missed the girls night the night of dad's Father and Sons camp out. We had a barbecue and swam, well mostly sat in the hot tub :-D It was a little breezy.
















My friend Chandree wasn't able to make it so she offered to take me to dinner one night. This last Tuesday she took me to Macayos. I wanted to go there since they don't have any locations up there in Boise and it was our families restaurant that we went to on the rare occasion that we went out to eat. It was good to see her. We got there about 8 and left at about 9:30 or 40ish. It was good catching up with her.

First Load Up and a Visit to my Ry

When Mike and Ryan were going to take the first load up to Boise they had a little truck trouble. Mike had taken his truck in to get it fixed before but it was still having trouble with towing a lot of weight. They ended up having to rent a U Haul. In a way it was a blessing since we where able to take up more and there was some bad snow on the way up. The horse trailer may not have been the best going through that snow.

It had been two weeks and I asked the principal if I could have two days off so that I could go see Ryan. She said I could. I was really excited. When Mike and I got up there I fell in love with the rental all over again. I'm way excited to have a place of our own and I look forward to being able to hang up some pictures of us.

I spent most of the time putting things into place at the rental. Ryan didn't want to put too many things into place since he knew I would probably want to put it somewhere else. I really was also glad that I didn't end up having to go four whole weeks before I got to see Ryan :-D

We really like the area and we just might look into maybe buying in that area when we reach that road.

Going to be Renting

So the house Mike was going to buy fell through. We are going to be renting the 3 bed 2 bath house. I was bummed when they said that the house may not go through. Although a part of me is glad that we will be the ones renting and Mike staying with us since I will feel more independent. Ryan could care less either way but I have a yearning for independence and being able to do it on our own. It will be nice to be able to say we are own our own and renting a real place of our own. Also I really am looking forward to organizing and hanging PICTURES! :-D

Here is the rental! I love it!





The master suite.





The living room and kitchen.




Then the backyard.






Ryan will be going up next Sunday or Monday. So this last weekend and all this next week will be crazy as I will be packing like a crazy woman. Ryan is studying for finals and it is his last week at his old job so he wont have much time. It's mostly up to me.

Long lost Friend

As you can see I am terrible with this journaling. My mom said that since we will be moving I need to be better at it so that the family knows what I am up to.

Like I said "moving". We have decided that it would be best to move up to Idaho since it would be a better area for raising kids "one day when we have them", purchasing a house would be more affordable and Ryan will be able to transfer his classes to Boise State. We will both be working with the granite company. He will be an installer at the beginning until he learns the quirks and then probably a template (drafter). After he starts to learn some things he will also be making commission on some bigger commercial jobs. I'm hoping the commission will be a money maker so that we can move on and be more independent.

Since my last post I had been called to be the Primary President in my ward. I was very nervous about this, but kinda relieved to know that it was only for our tiny ward. We have maybe 15 kids that come every Sunday. Ryan teases that in our ward we don't hear much kids but we do need to check pulses to see if the elderly are still there. We have an older ward. I'm hoping our new ward that we move to will have some younger families.

Mike and I had made a trip up there during spring break. I went to look for a place for us to stay. I was looking at rentals and found a place that I liked quite a bit. Then the next day Mike wanted to just go look at this one house that was for sale. We looked at it and it looked even better than the house that Debbie and I had declared as the "perfect house". As mike was looking at it he said that he would be dumb not to make an offer on it. They we taking bids until the next day at noon. Well the bank liked Mikes offer and they are trying to finalize things. We're are all hoping that we can close on it soon so that I can tell the rental company that we are going to pass.

If Mike get this house Ryan and I will rent from him and stay there for a bit. I hoping that in a year we will be able to save up some so that we can put a down payment on a house ourselves. We are thinking of putting in a garden this Summer. I'm excited! Also the property already has a chicken coop so Holly said she wants eggs. She likes fresh unpasteurized eggs. I'm actually looking forward to that too. It'd be kinda fun.

Mom says I'm going to turn into a cowgirl on her. Haha I don't think so. Although I might buy me some cowgirl boots so that I don't scuff up my city girl shoes when I go riding the horses.