We Moved.

We moved for the seventh time in our four years of marriage last month {August 10th}. You would think that we would be pros at the whole moving thing by now but we're not. It's stressful and crazy every. single. time. This was our smoothest move to date though! We had family, friends, and soooo many people from both our old ward and our new ward come to help us load and unload all of our stuff. We felt so blessed to have so much help!

Over the last month I've gotten everything unpacked and have kind of started decorating things. It's a work in progress of course but this is the fastest I've ever unpacked before so I'm feeling pretty good! It usually takes me a good six months to get the final few boxes unpacked and then another six months to a year to get the house decorated. This time I was unpacked in under a month and we're about halfway done with decorating. Woot! Woot!  I guess it has helped that I'm not pregnant/have a brand new baby {We moved two times while I was pregnant with Holland and then again less than a month after her birth--ridiculous!}. I just wanted to post a few pictures of our new place. It's nothing fancy but we are really loving our new apartment and making it feel like home!

I have a couple more decorating projects I want to get done but I am trying to make a trip down to IKEA first so it might be a while before things are finished. I'll post more pictures whenever that actually happens though!

In the girls' room. {Pallet bookshelves made by Patrick and Tyne}

Living room. {Cubbies made by Race, banner from Nikki}

Kitchen {ASHBY est. 2010 sign made by Amy Gregson of My 3 Monsters, whiteboard from IKEA years ago, chalkboard from a friend's wedding, tin buckets from Target}.

Aprons made by my mom, aunt, and grandma. {We LOVE these aprons for art projects and eating and just wearing around the house!}

I spent a good hour+ decorating our fridge with contact paper one of the first nights after we moved in. Race got a good laugh out of the fact that I got so distracted by this pretty, but definitely not top priority, project. He was super nice about it and helped me finish it up and I love it! I'm thinking of switching it out for some chalkboard contact paper but we shall see. I'm enjoying the bright green! {Crate from Michael's, white basket from Target $1 section, contact paper from WalMart}

We only have two drawers in our whole kitchen {ridiculous!} so these 

little containers are our new "junk drawers"! 

Rearranging{Days13&14}

These are not the most exciting pictures and you might think that they were last pictures like some of the other ones that look like this but they are not!

 January 13, 2011

This first picture is of our living room WITHOUT the Christmas tree! If you noticed in the last picture of our living room from just a couple of days ago our Christmas tree was still there. When I came home from work on Thursday the tree was gone, the room was clean, and Race had set up our bookshelf that his mom had given us. It made our room look so much bigger and sooo clean! Race didn't think I was very surprised or grateful but I was. We had made a deal that if he took the tree out of the house then I would do all the cleaning up in the house. He did both! And he said that the clean up took FOREVER! Especially because our vacuum cleaner hasn't been suctioning very well lately. Anyway, I love having our space back!

January 14, 2011

This is a picture of Christ with "The Living Christ" on top of it. Our sister Amber Ashby made it for us for Christmas and we FINALLY got it hung up in our apartment. :] It is right in the middle of our living room and I love it. I'm glad to have this reminder up in our home to follow Christ's example. On a side note, I hung up this picture all by myself. I originally asked for Race's help but I ended up doing it on my own and I think that he was a little sad since he is usually the one to do all the picture/decorations hanging.

P.S. We hit the two week mark! I've heard that this is when people quit their picture-a-day thing but so far so good!

Beautiful Things

I'm playing catch up again. But I'll still keep it short and to the point.

1.I am grateful for the color red. I don't know why but red things just make me very happy.






2. This one also relates to the picture above. I love these flowers! They are red gerbera daisies and I love them more than roses by a long shot. And also isn't that vase with red ribbon cute? I think so. :) And the red ribbon was all me!

3. Service. The other night I got off of a long night at work and Race wasn't home from cleaning yet so I made dinner (this doesn't happen very often). Meanwhile Race was out "cleaning" when actually he was running to the store to get me these beautiful flowers. Isn't he sweet?! It is hard to learn to put each other first in our marriage especially when we are both so busy and tired all the time but I think we got it right this night! :)






5. I am grateful for pictures! This is our super cute picture wall at our house. It's not completely finished but it will be soon. We have a couple cute quotes to put in the last two frames. But I love our picture wall. Eventually we will switch out some of our wedding/engagement pictures for pictures of our families but we don't have much to choose from right now.






6. The final thing I am grateful for today is SPACE. We have sooo much space in our home now and it is such a nice change. I'll show you two pictures. First the one of our old apartment and it's messiness and tinyness and then one of our new super spacey apartment.









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Four Days' Worth of Gratitude

I am four days behind so here are four things I am grateful for.

1. Having a job. I am really grateful to have a job that helps keep Race and I afloat and leaves us some room to have fun. My job is incredibly hard at times but I know that right now we need it.

2. I am grateful for the cute babies I watch. They are always doing something to make me laugh or smile and they make hard days not quite as bad.




3. I am grateful for a house with an awesome heater that keeps Race and I warm during these cold Flagstaff nights. (I am also grateful for our house but I don't want to blog about that one until I have more pictures).

4. I am grateful for cheap clothes from clearance racks. I loooove shopping and I would not be ableto afford it if it weren't for clearance racks. So I am definitely grateful for clearance. And just so everyone knows most of my clothing is off of the clearance rack. So you can have good style for cheap.

That's all for today! I am happy to be alive and to be blessed in so many ways!

Much Too Long

It's been much too long since I blogged last.

So now I get to play CATCH UP! 

That sounds way more exciting than it really is. 

But anyways, pictures are going to help me remember what all I did in the last month and a halfish. 

So, here goes! I am going to begin with going home at the beginning of March to see Wes and Asae Bodily's new baby Siona Lin. She is absolutely adorable and oh so tiny! 

I haven't seen her for a good month though so I'm sure she's not quite as tiny anymore. 

And I am sure she is even more adorable.

Also in the past month I got to go to Oregon to visit my grandparents.
Both my sets of grandparents live in Oregon as well as my Great Grandma Usher.
I flew out for my Spring Break and got to spend a whole week in Oregon!
This was my first time being in Oregon for somewhere around six years!
Much too long to go without visiting where I lived from the time I was born until I was eight.
I had a wonderful time in Oregon.
I got to spend a lot of time with my grandparents and I got to talk to them a lot.
I loved being able to learn more about my grandparents and really get to know them as people rather than just as my parents' parents.
My institute teacher always jokes that grandparents and grandchildren always get along really well because they have a common enemy, the grandchildren's parents and the grandparents' children.
I'm pretty sure that's not quite why we got along so well but I did love being able to visit my grandparents and getting to know them.
I am so grateful for the examples that they have all set for me and the love that they showed me while I was there. Visiting just made me want to go back and visit again and again!
So I am sure it will not be anywhere near six years before I get out to Oregon again.
Also while I was in Oregon I got to visit my second grade teacher Mrs. Leighthauser.
She was an amazing teacher and she is an amazing person.
I got to chat with her for a couple of hours and tell her about my life and hear about hers.
She is such an example to me of a good teacher and just an overall good person.
Her husband has been disabled for years and I love seeing her patience and interactions with him.
It helped me know even more that I want to work with people with disabilities whether physical or mental.
Finally, I got to visit my neighbors from across the street while I was growing up.
The Cheney's.
It was super fun catching up with them because I remember spending hours over at their house when I was younger.
I am so grateful for family and friends from the past and the present and for the things that I have learned from each and every one of them. I hope that I have made some of an impression on their lives as well.
Here are some pictures from Oregon.

This is me at Smith Rock. And I don't know if you can see the mountains even further in the background but ALL week I was just amazed by their beauty. I could never get a super good picture of them though.

This is a picture of my old house. When I was younger it seemed soooo big. But it looks pretty dang tiny!

This is a picture of me at my old elementary school :]

These are the llamas by my old elementary school that I remembered walking by every day to school. I was telling my Grandma about that so we decided to find them and they are still there!

Here is a picture of me and my Grandma and Grandpa Olmstead, my Uncle Sean, and my cousin Peyton. My Aunt Rhonda was taking the picture so sadly she's not in this one.

Here are me and my cousins Curtis, Olivia, and Peyton. I hadn't seen Curtis and Olivia since they were probably about four and six or something crazy like that so it was super fun to see them and their mom and meet Sarah's husband Mark.

I'm not sure why this one won't turn but this is my Great Grandma Usher and I :]
She is one good lookin' gal!

Now last but most definitely not least on my list of things that has happened in the past month or so...
Just before heading home to see Siona I went on a few dates with a boy...
Excited to hear the rest??
Well, you should be :]
So I went on a few dates with this boy named Race Ashby (pictures will follow soon).
We go to the same institute but had never formally met before talking on facebook.
(Yeah, yeah I know it's a kinda lame way to "meet" but we can say we met on the internet and get some weird looks from people!)
He added me as a friend supposedly not knowing who I was other than that we knew a lot of the same people.
So, we started talking and the next day he invited himself over bearing gifts of ice cream!
(He works at Coldstone Creamery)
After we officially met in person he asked me on a date for the next day.
We went on four or five dates throughout that week and by the end of the week had the DTR (Determine The Relationship) talk and decided we wanted to "date exclusively".
We have now been dating for one month, one week, and five days :]
And what a good one month, one week, and five days it has been!
Here are some pictures of the two of us on our trip to Las Vegas to go to one of his mission companion's weddings, at my house in Chandler, and then a couple other random ones:

Riding E.B. and Jackie's sweet tandem bike at the park:

Same face?? Pirate ship in Las Vegas:

 

Sitting in traffic on the strip in Las Vegas:

 

Outside the Las Vegas temple:

 

So that's my life in the past month. It has been one heck of a month :] 

I love life right now and am grateful for the blessings, opportunities, and experiences I have had in the past month. 

I will update more often now that I'm back on track!

Home Sweet Home

I am home for the holidays and it is absolutely wonderful! :]

In the Bible Dictionary under the word temple it says:
"Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness."
Each and every time I go home I am reminded of this phrase as my parents have done such a wonderful job making our house a HOME.
Today I was sitting at our extra-long kitchen table that we've had forever
looking at our white board/bulletin board and noticing all the little things that have been stuck to it/written on it over the years: Family engagement pictures, pictures of new baby cousins, a picture of Jackie we've had up since before E.B.'s mission, a dollar bill, a picture collage Gelsey made when she was in kindergarten (or maybe it was Solomon), notes on the whiteboard, new cell phone numbers; just lots of random things that have little memories connected to them.
I love my family and being at home around them all the time despite all the chaos.
Over this break I decided that I am going to work on being "More Diligent and Concerned at Home" as Elder David A. Bednar challenged us this past October General Conference.
I am going to work on:
1. Expressing Love and Showing it.
2. Bearing Testimony and Living it.
and
3. Being Consistent.
There are lots of things to focus on during the Christmas season and
family is a very important one.
I hope that I can share my love and my testimony with my
family through this season and through the coming years.
I have been blessed with wonderful parents and siblings who do this for me and
I want to return the favor. :]

So far this Christmas season I have taken the kids to get their hair cuts for my brother's wedding this Saturday. This turned out.....not so great. Here are some before and after photos...the boys' hair honestly did not look very different. And my mom was not too happy about that. But I'm not a mom so I didn't know what to tell the hair cutting people. :/
So here's the before. I love how they are all sitting the same. Hahaha. And I told them to look mad. Gelsey did an acceptionally good job.

Here is the after picture.
Uhh yeah the boys' hair does not look different.
We might take them in to get it fixed before the wedding this weekend...
But Gelsey's is nice and cute and short though. :] Like mine! GO SHORT HAIR! Also over the break I have taken kids Christmas shopping. It is our first year doing Secret Santa with the whole family (now that the kids are all old enough to earn some money with chores and pick out presents mostly on their own) so I get to cart the kids around to all different stores to get this final shopping done. YAY! ;)
Today I made three double batches of chocolate chip cookies for the wedding luncheon dessert. Holy heck that was a lot of baking for me! (Roommates: I thought we baked a lot...this topped it all (at least for in one day) and I still have more to do. HELP!!! :/)
I have also been able to spend time with my Grandparents (they are here for a month and for my brother's wedding)
With having my grandparents here I get to here my Grandma play the piano and it is absolutely beautiful. I tried to upload a video but I couldn't figure it out. So I'll try again later.
Anyway, I have thoroughly enjoyed being home although I'm sure in about a month I'll be ready to head back up to Flagstaff with my wonderful roommates :]
To end here are some WONDERFUL pictures!

Here are the Olmstead girls (plus Jasmine and minus the sister-in-laws)
Here is one of Rachel and I at the temple lights. I was also able to see Katie Wilson, my friend Chris Brown, and I got to meet Katie and Rachel's friend Ryan, but I forgot to take more pictures. :( But here is one of Rachel making me look RIDICULOUSLY short!
And here is one of me trying to make Rachel look RIDICULOUSLY short. Haha. Did it work??
Well, that's all for now. There will be more very soon though because we have a WEDDING coming up! :]