Our life

Don't anybody have a heart attack from the shock of having an update from us two week sin a row!  It's Heidi this time and I am really hoping to be better about blogging.  My excuse is always that our life is boring and I have nothing to write about, but really I think I have things to write about - I just never have time to write about them.  But my (new - haha) goal is to make time.

I have been reflecting on our life lately and how blessed we are.  We have so many of our needs and wants met.  We are so happy together and are enjoying this time of life.  We are both progressing in our professional, spiritual, and personal lives.  It is a great time of growth for us.  Like Mike said I am the Young Women President and can I just tell you how much I love it?  I truly feel like Heavenly Father has instilled in me a greater love for these girls than I thought possible.  I do wish I had more time to do everything I want for them, but isn't that how everything goes?

I'll just leave you with two pictures that I want to have documented.

This is our "Music Corner."  I was inspired to find a picture of each instrument that we play and hang above our piano and somehow found these awesome photos that match very well together!  I love my little corner and can't wait until one day when it is a whole room. :) (P.S. I also LOVE our digital piano that we got for Christmas 2010!  It is perfect for the stage of life we are in.)

And last, but definitely not least is a picture of the beautiful flowers Mike gave to me for Valentine's Day.  He had them delivered yesterday morning because he wanted me to be able to enjoy them this weekend while I am actually home and because they take a few days to bloom fully after they are delivered so they should be in full bloom on Valentine's day!  What a sweetheart!

Okay, so Heidi and I haven't been very good at adding things to the blog if you hadn't noticed... sorry about that.  I'm sure you all don't want to hear all the details of our lives in one go, but here are some of the highlights.

Two weeks ago I was released from being the elders quorum president after about a year and a half.  It was a bit of a relief to have one less big source of stress gone from my life.  Last week they put me back in the Young Men presidency so that I'm working with the deacons (12-13 year-old boys).  The bishopric understands that it isn't reasonable for me to be involved with weekday activities on a regular basis, so my calling is specifically to teach on Sunday, which is pretty easy for me to do and is something I really enjoy.  So that's a good change.

Heidi is still the Young Women president and has plenty of things to juggle between that plus teaching school, teaching a couple of piano students, and ... it feels like I'm forgetting something else, but it's probably just because she never gets any down time.  Her class this year is twice the size as it was last year, but the kids are much better behaved, so overall it's easier and a better experience.  She really enjoys working with the young women in our ward, but wishes she didn't have to be working full-time while having that calling so she had more time and energy to do things the way she would like them done.

My work on my PhD is going pretty well.  My recent calculations of when I might graduate are December of 2014.  Of course, that's all dependent on how my research goes over the next couple of years and how the writing of my dissertation goes as well, but I'm hopeful that I might be done before I turn 31 in the spring of 2015.  Yikes!

We recently hung out with some friends of ours and decorated cupcakes, which I know sounds lame, but it was a lot of fun.  Here are some of the pictures from that.  If you don't know what some of them are supposed to be, don't worry.

 

What do you think?

I made this for Mike for our anniversary next week. I think I like it - I'm still worried it's too cheesy, but I was thinking about it and I would love it if my parents had something like this. I hope he likes it.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Major Update!!!

Ok, ok I know I stink at this. I think that my problem is that I put off blogging so much that it gets to be REALLY overwhelming when I think of catching up! So I'm thinking maybe a bulleted list will make the task feel a little less overwhelming. So here's an update, in no particular order:

• Life is good! We are super busy with everything, but overall happy.
• Biggest news: We are moving to Albuquerque for the summer! Mike got an awesome internship with Sandia National Labs! We'll be there from mid-May to July. Figuring out housing for just 10 weeks is not very fun... Plus our lease is up in our current apt in March so we need to decide how many times we want to move in the next 6 months. Ugh!
• Second biggest news: Mike got into the PhD program at ASU! Woohoo! He was a little stressed about this... He is really excited! This means we will definitely be in Arizona for approx. another 4 years from right now. Yay for blazing hot summers! At least we get a little bit of a break this summer, right? The usual high in ABQ is 92!!! Woot! Woot!
• Christmas was great! We spent tons of time being bounced around from family to family. We got to see almost every single family member that lives in Utah! Almost...we would have if it wouldn't have been for the stupid snow! A few of the highlights: meeting our new nephew Porter, going to Caleb's (Mike's oldest nephew) "farewell,"Anderson family reunion, talking to Justin (my brother on a mission in Chile) over Skype for over an hour, relaxing and not thinking about work for two weeks, and lots of yummy yummy mom-made dinners!
• We got a piano! This is so exciting for me, I don't even know how to convey the happiness! Piano is my thing, my outlet. So I was pretty thrilled when we found a good deal. We decided on a digital piano because of how not-permanent our life is right now. We actually bought it in Utah and crammed it into our car to bring it home. It was an adventure, but I have been so happy! I've played it every day since we got it! I love it!
• Teaching is going great. It's exhausting and I feel like never have the energy to do anything else with my life. But I'm working on finding a balance. I really enjoy having my own class and being able to find cool things to do with them. I get frustrated a lot, but I think that comes with the territory.
• School is good for Mike. He is super busy! His goal is to get his thesis done by mid-April. Yikes! To top it off he was called as the Elder's Quorum President back in October. We've seen a lot of blessings come from this and he's been doing awesome at balancing all that he has going on in his life.

That's all of the updates I can think of. I think another reason why I never update this blog is because our life isn't that exciting. But I'll try and get better. (I always say that.) Here's to hoping I update my blog before another 5 months passes by!

Back to School...Back to School...

I HAVE A JOB!!!

Yes, it's true, by some miracle I was able to obtain a teaching job in this dreadful Arizona economy. I am the newest 5th grade (yes 5th grade - scary!) teacher at Saddleback Elementary School in Maricopa. It's a commute of about 30 minutes, but the commute doesn't involve driving towards Phoenix, so I'll take it. :)

I start tomorrow morning - 8 o'clock on the dot. It's possibly the most terrifying thing I have done in my life, but we'll see. I'll let you know after tomorrow. The scariest part is that I have a week, yes 1 week, before school starts. It starts a week from tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes you can all start praying for me now. :) I think I'll be ok, it sounds like there are a lot of helpful teachers around that will help me along the way. I can do it!

Anyway, wanted to share that exciting bit of news quick. I'm hoping to do a good job of documenting this adventure, but I'm expecting it to be largely time consuming. I'll try.

Summer is definitely here!

As usual, I am slower than dirt at updating my blog, but every time I do blog I make a resolve to do better...hopefully someday it will actually stick. Maybe when our life gets a little more exciting... We've been able to do a few fun things since school got out. Here are some updates:

We bought Ticket to Ride for our anniversary present to each other. We love it and play it probably a little too much. :)

We went to Utah!! Woohoo! Always the highlight of my life. :) I got to spend almost 2 weeks there! And Mike joined me for the last few days.

I spent lots of time chilling with my sisters (this picture is missing Whitney because she was already in bed...we forgot to get a picture of all 4 of us - I guess we'll do it next time!)

And we had an AWESOME Mabey reunion over Memorial Day weekend! It was great!

We went to Hill Air Force Base:

And to the Zoo!!!

We also took a family picture, which was super exciting because we hadn't had one done since my wedding.

And here is our little family photo:

Oh and I chopped off like 7 inches of my hair...super scary, but I think I like it. Truthfully the jury's still out. :)

I'm finally done!

Yet again, it's been a while! But I have a good excuse! I've been finishing up my bachelors degree! Hallelujah!!!!! It feels really great to be done! I finished student teaching, turned in my portfolio, and looked at pictures off of USU's website of what my graduation looked like. Mike just finished his finals today and my graduation would have been this past Saturday, so there was no (feasible) way for us to get to Utah in time. But that's ok. It still feels wonderful to be done!

Now my job is to find a job. I think job hunting would have to bee on my top 3 list of things I hate. But that's ok too! I've been looking, but things seem to be pretty bleak. There's a big proposition that is hopefully going to pass here in Arizona that will raise the sales tax in order to have more funding for education. If it passes then there will be quite a few more openings and hopefully I can find something. I've been told that it will probably be July before I know anything though. Fun fun!

Our lives are great though! We've just finished up the crazy holiday season for our little family. My b-day April 9th, Mike's April 29th, and our Anniversary on May 10th. It makes for a lot of presents (or the lack there-of) and dinner dates in a short amount of time. We had a lot of fun though! We did Chinese for my b-day, Italian for Mike's, and made homemade pita's for our anniversary. We ended up having a blast on our anniversary! Mike somehow managed to get most of the day off work, so we hung out and did nothing! It was great! We watched "Somewhere In Time" (tear) while we ate a fancy breakfast and mostly lounged around, but in the afternoon we decided to head out to the mall. I know it's cheesy, but since the 2nd anniversary is the cotton anniversary we bought each other new cotton t-shirts (pictures to come), plus this awesome game:

We've had a lot of fun playing it every day since. :)

Our plan for the summer is to hang out here in Tempe and cook...we're kind of dreading the heat, but it's been in the low 80's so far this week = heaven! Mike has funding to keep doing his research - he has to have his thesis proposal ready and proposed (?) by the beginning of fall semester. My plan is to spend a lot of time applying for teaching positions and work almost full time doing Mad Science Summer Camps. It's the same after school program I was doing this past fall, but full time during the summer. It should be a lot of fun and it will give me a good amount of free time to find jobs.

I'm really hoping to get better about updating my blog, so hopefully that will actually happen.

I know, I know it's been a while...

So our life has been a little crazy, hence me not updated my blog in FOREVER! Basically, I live and breathe "student teaching" and all Mike does is work and school. Even on the weekends. Sunday's are the only reason we are still alive. That being said: we love life! Although life is crazy, we still have about an hour every night to enjoy each other a little bit before we need to go to bed and start over the next day. Mike always keeps me laughing and we love watching "our" shows and playing games.
Here are a few photo updates:
Our Valentines Dinner (we're not much for the super cheesy romantic thing so this was about the best we could do - ha ha!)

We barbecued with our good friends the Rafferty's on Presidents Day - this picture isn't the greatest, but it's better than nothing.

Here's the most recent Anderson family picture - we took this just the day before Mike and I had to go back to Arizona. It was very last minute, but I think it turned out quite well.

And here's the one with just the kids. The urgency of this picture was because Justin left for his mission to Chile in February and we wanted one last picture.

The Glorious Holiday's

I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful our holiday's were. We got to spend 3 weeks in Utah and it was pure bliss! We were able to see almost every family member that lives in Utah and got to enjoy tons of fun Christmas parties. It was so wonderful to get away from normal life and be with family! We were glad to see snow again, but equally, if not more glad, to say goodbye to it when it was time to come home. :)

Here's our cute little Christmas card picture... We liked the cactus theme so could rub it in our families face that we are in heat while they are in cold. :)



We're back to the grind here in Arizona now. I've started my student teaching which is keeping me very busy. Mike is doing school and working as a research assistant. We are both busy, but we're still trying to find time to have fun together! I'm already starting to get a little anxious for summer, but I'm trying to enjoy every day. :)

A recapitulation of events...

Ha Ha! Like my title - I didn't want to title yet another post "update" - so I used a thesaurus. :)

Anyway, life is so good! I just can't even express in writing how happy I am to be in the part of life that I am right now. We are poor, starving, have no idea where the money for next semester is going to come from college students and I love it! We just have each other and it is so much fun! Our marriage has grown so much since we've been in Arizona and had to completely rely on each other. It's been amazing.

And I really do love Arizona. I'm still wearing a jacket while all you Utahn's are freezing your buns off and praying you don't die on the roads. Pretty good life... Now if I could just talk all our family into moving down here with us... :) But I do love it and if we can't go back to Utah and I would definitely be happy staying here - however please note that I am saying this in December - not in July or August. :( Yuck!

I think one of the main reasons we love Arizona so much is because of our ward here. I truly feel that we were led to this ward; that through all the crazy stressing about where we were going to live here and hours of searching for apartments on the internet that the Spirit was just slowly nudging us so that we would end up in this ward. Not only do we feel like we are needed in this ward, but we feel like we needed this ward. It's really nice when it goes both ways. This past Sunday Mike was released from his calling as the Young Men's Priest quorum adviser/secretary and put in as the 1st councilor in the Young Men's. He does such a great job with these young men! I was put in as the Beehive's adviser!!!!!/ward choir pianist. And I already have the call to be the ward organist. Three callings...fun for me eh? But I can't even begin to explain how excited I am to be in Young Women's! It's kind of weird to me that just 3 1/2 years ago I was in young women's myself, but I am still thrilled! We have a really small group of youth so even though my title is beehive's advisor I am really with all the girls that are in middle school and then there is another leader that is with the girls in high school. The other women that just got called in to Young Women are AMAZING women! Literally every single one of them are incredible. I feel really overwhelmed about the privilege of getting to work with them - and especially giving lessons in front of them. :) But I am positively thrilled about this!

Anyway, here's an update just in case anyone was wondering. We are headed to Utah on Sunday or Monday and I CAN'T WAIT!!! We're spending 3 weeks there so come by and say hi!

Meet the new members of our family...

Our cute little turtles! We've had them for a couple months, but I haven't gotten around to posting about them. Rocky is the one on the left and Adrienne is the one on the right. They aren't exactly my favorite things in the world, but I love them because of how much Mike loved them. And he's awesome at taking care of them too. I don't do ANYTHING! It's great!


They are cute little babies! They have actually grown a lot! Here's a pic that kind of shows how small they are when you compare it with Mike's fingers:


And here they are in their cute little habitat. They are water turtles so they live in water, but they have to have the cute little dock that they can come up on and bask in the UVA and UVB rays.

The latest project :)

My name is Heidi, and I am addicted to cheap/cute crafts!

Ha-ha! So here's my latest project. I saw this on a blog - I can't remember which one, but I was dying to do it! My friend suggested to look at Goodwill for a cheap window shutter and I found this one at Goodwill for two bucks!!! Woohoo!

So yesterday I painted it and popped the bow on (I decided to put the bow on it so that I could kind of disguise the missing slat at the top.) and I was done! I totally love this because it's a cute decoration and a great way to organize my important papers that need to be taken care of!

"Our fun weekend"

This weekend was a complete party. This is what we did:

And when I say "we" I mean Mike. He did six of them - 3 pages front and back - for a final he has today. It literally took him ALL weekend! And he wouldn't let me help because he was afraid his professor would notice the random changes in handwriting, even though my handwriting sadly looks more boy than girl. I feel so bad for his poor back and hands! I think he actually has some small blisters starting on the tips of his fingers. Yuck! Hopefully he will do well on his test and this dreary weekend will have paid off!

My Cheap-o Fall Decor

So last week I was doing an awesome job of procrastinating studying for a test and decided to find a fall craft that I could do with just the things I had in my house. I found this. I thought it was a pretty cute idea. I didn't have any ribbon, so I improvised and I still really like how mine turned out. I also used rolled up paper for the stems and the big one looked really empty so I made a small one and put it inside of the big one. I had a lot of fun making them! And I definitely enjoyed procrastinating. :)

Leah came to visit!

October has been great! I got to spend a weekend with my family in Blanding and then the next weekend Leah came to visit! It was so great! It was a complete bummer because I was really sick the whole time she was here, but we tried to make the best of it. We spent a little time with James and Amy:


We went to a session at the Mesa Temple. It was a blast! Even though I was snuffling and (quietly) coughing through the whole thing. It was only the second time Leah had gone through a session so that was really fun.

We, of course, had to make a quick stop at one of the Nielsen's in Arizona since Leah worked at the Nielsen's in Bountiful through high school. It was so yummy and fun!

And we did what we do best...play Dr. Mario!!! It's always nice to play together because it actually gives us both some good competition. :)

We were so glad that she was able to come visit! She's leaving for a mission in January, so it was great to spend some good time together. Thanks for coming Leah!

San Diego!!

One of the perks of living in Arizona is that we are FIVE hours from the beach! This is pretty awesome for us because from Utah it's more like a 10-13 hour drive. We decided to visit San Diego over Labor Day weekend with the Rafferty's. It was such a blast! I went to high school with James and Amy and they actually live in our same apartment complex! It's been great having them around and we had a blast together in San Diego. We packed SO much into 2 and a half days! Here's a few of the things we did:
We attended a session at the San Diego temple. It was so beautiful!

We took a complete gamble on the food places we tried out, but it worked out very well! Saturday night we went and tried out a pizza place in Little Italy. And it was AMAZING! Definitely the best pizza I have ever had. Mike said it was the first time since his mission that he had pizza that tasted like that.

Sunday morning we went to an amazing ward! I have never been to such a touching and spiritual testimony meeting. After church we went to La Jolla where there were sea caves and beautiful beach.

We also got to see a cute family of sea lions. There was two babies, a mom, and a dad. The dad was GINORMOUS!!! But I didn't get a picture of them all together.

We spent a little time playing at the beach:

Later we went over to Point Loma to go to Cabrillo National Monument where we got to go inside a Lighthouse and get a quick look at tide pools.

Amy and I tried really hard to get a cool jumping picture, but we didn't do so hot...

That night we found another awesome place to eat called Rockin' Baja. It was a bunch of fun and way yummy!

Monday we drive over to Coronado. We chilled at a beach/park for just a little bit. Then we grabbed some yummy frozen yogurt and headed over to Old Town. We were way excited to see the Mormon Battalion Monument there, but it's closed for renovation so we'll just have to see it next time. We did get to see a grape stomp like in I Love Lucy, so that was awesome!

On our way to San Diego we passed this hilarious hotel in Gila Bend, AZ called the Space Age Lodge. We thought it was so funny that we decided to make awesome tin foil alien hats and take a picture on our way back. (James' idea) We were trying to beat the sunset, but we didn't do a very good job.

Moving!!! - Finally...

Ok here's the actual moving update. We spent about a week and a half packing up - mixed with spending time with family.
Here's some of our junk stacked up:

And here's how we slept for three days because we had put our bed up to have more room for boxes: (Notice the little lantern next to the bed - Mike wanted to pull it out because we were "camping" haha He cracks me up!)

We spent a very long hot day (at least it wasn't in Arizona) packing up the Uhual. My parents and 3 siblings were wonderful to come and help. Plus we had a few friends and family come by to say goodbye which was very sweet. My dad was amazing! He spent the whole day standing in the Uhaul and he packed that thing like sardines! It was awesome! We were able to not only fit all of our stuff, but also all of our good friend the Rafferty's stuff. They just got married and didn't have a way to get things to Arizona.
Here's us in front of the Uhual:

We got here safely and are now settled. We both really like it here. The only thing that is missing is family.