Mission and Marriage

The two best things EVER!

And I had the awesome opportunity to spend the last week in Utah with my sister preparing for her mission and my Sister Cannon getting married! It was amazing!

This will probably be a short, but sweet blog post. I want to include all my pictures from the trip, but will only share a select few. For more, view my public Facebook album here.

So, my sister Susan has been called to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Peru Lima North Mission...she leaves September 30th and is going to be AWESOME! She already knows the language, the gospel, and has the Spirit, so the only thing she needs is mission clothes! I could definitely help her with that. We spent our days combing through lots and lots of stores looking for cute, comfy, and modest clothes for Hermana Hoonie. And we found some great deals! My personal favorite was this cropped, short sleeved jacket for $7! Perfect for church and meetings in humid South America. Susan had a fun time trying to figure out how to wear it (she may be mad I'm showing the picture with her stomach showing, but I just think it is too funny!). After much convincing on my part, she bought it, wore it to church on Sunday (with a shirt underneath!), and hopefully loves it as much as I do!

We had a good time cruising around Utah together. I went to some of her classes, church meetings, neighbor's birthday parties, etc. We drove up to Centerville to see family, traipsed around the Orem cemetery to find family, made fake music videos to Ace of Base in the crazy yellow rental car, and made some good food together! I especially love this picture taken on a dodgy part of BYU's campus. If you can't read the sign, it's basically warning you not to walk around here alone after dark...we are just showing you why.

On to the marriage portion of the trip! My Sister Abigail Cannon married an amazing guy (who I met for the first time during the ceremony) and they are so cute and happy together and perfect for each other! I got to spend Thursday with her before all the wedding business took place, so it was a lot of fun. The ceremony was beautiful and amazing and reminded me how blessed I am to be married to Adam for time and all eternity! Love is amazing! Congratulations again, Abby and Patrick...we'll have to plan that Colorado camping trip!

Some of Abby's mission companions came to Abby's house a bit before the reception to help set up lights and decorations. We got asked to put the cake together, which included using frosting and coconut to hide the gaps between the layers...we were nervous but pulled it off! Here's my "last-born," Sista 'alladay and I hard at work. It's crazy to believe that she's been home for a year, when her first transfer was my last transfer. Time flies by!

Those of you who know my father will definitely appreciate this next picture. They've had this for at least 20 years, which means they had only been married for 10 years when my dad bought it! It's kind of strange to find this when you're looking for your grandparents...but my dad is right - when the time comes to need it, he's already gotten it taken care of! Thanks for doing all the work for us, Dad! I still wonder how this got brought up and if my parents went on a date to pick it out....you'll have to tell us the whole story, Mom!

A lot has happened and we need to blog about it before our big trip to London and Paris in two weeks.

The high point is that Karen got a sewing machine and has become rather crafty as of late. She made a quilt for our new niece Kendra Elizabeth Fuchs and couldn't wait to show the rest of you blog readers out there. Here are some pictures:

Not only has she made a quilt but she has several other projects planned in an effort to be cute and crafty while at the same time being self reliant and frugal. You don't have to tell me, I already know I picked a good wife.

Another high point was my first paycheck in more than 3 months. I finally got it after payroll telling me my check was lost in the mail, then sending me a check they said was good, but really there was a stop payment on it. So when another check showed up they told me that the stop payment was transferred to the other check and that the one I deposited would be alright. Then two days later our checking account was negative and I got charged for a returned check. Fortunately I didn't have any other major charges because of a reserve line that kicks in when my balance drops below a certain amount. So all those bills we paid off and checks we wrote and fund transfers went through just fine with out any more fees. Thank goodness for planning for the worst. The best part is that payroll is paying me back for all the fees that we racked up because they totally goofed up everything.

I don't necessarily hate my job but I certainly don't wake up every morning excited to talk on the phone all day long. Some calls I enjoy but most are just the same thing over and over again. For those who don't know, I work at a call center fielding calls for the Federal Student Aid Information Center which answers questions about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and other general Federal Student Aid programs run by the Department of Education. So, I'm your resident expert on all things FAFSA and other financial aid stuff for college. While most of our callers are referred to their schools' financial aid offices, we can still help a lot. So anyone out there needing help answering a question on the FAFSA, or don't know why they aren't getting as much as they think they should, or hate that they still have to include their parents' income and asset information, you can ask me and I can explain everything.

Last of all, we are putting forth a greater effort to be healthy. Not only are we TRYING to exercise more, but eat healthy food too. We're taking a nutrition class put on by a couple in our church and they're helping us make a food lifestyle change for the better. Basically, eat as many fruit and vegetables as you can and avoid anything with trans fat in it. Obviously there's more to it than that but those are the high points.

And finally, Karen asked that I share a story about a dessert mishap from last night. So we wanted something sweet after dinner and started looking through a cookbook for ideas. We found a good Apple Dumpling recipe that looked easy to make and wasn't terribly unhealthy either. We set to work preparing them, we wrapped apple slices covered in cinnamon sugar in crescent rolls and then poured on an apple juice, brown sugar, and melted butter sauce, then had to wait 30min for them to cook and then 30min to cool. So, after all this anticipation we were very eager to eat a delicious-looking dessert. While eating them we both thought they tasted way too buttery and had a strange aftertaste. I finished mine but Karen couldn't finish hers and we both felt kinda sick after eating them. Before throwing away the leftovers I pulled out the wrapper for the crescent rolls and discovered that we used the Garlic Butter Crescent rolls instead of the original ones. We both felt like purging our stomachs of such a disgusting combination but instead went to bed with tummy aches and bad breath. This morning we still had tummy aches and some pretty gnarly morning breath too. The moral of the story is to read the label of your crescent rolls and make sure you buy what you think you're buying.