Worst Blogger Ever...

Yep, it's official....I'm the worst blogger ever. It is just hard for me because it's not like anything exciting happens with us, we don't have kids (I will get to that later), we don't have any pets, we don't even have a house we can renovate and post pictures of.

Life is good though, Beau and I are happy and doing well. He is still hacking away at school and I'm still working at the good old ICCU. We live a pretty ordinary life. We moved to a family ward about a month ago and Beau is in Young Mens, I'm in Young Womens....I had my first Sunday with them today and I felt very out of my element. It is weird how just when I get comfortable I get hit with something that throws me for a loop.

Speaking of the family ward, we hesitated going to a family ward for so long because of our obvious lack of children. Beau and I have been married for 2 years, way past the period when righteous, multiply and replenish, LDS couples start to have children....heck we should have 2 with a 3rd on the way by this point. The honest truth is that not everyone has the ability to have children as easily as "we got pregnant on our honeymoon" and "I was on birth control and got pregnant" couples. Beau and I have been trying for a year and a half to have children to no avail. I don't hate or feel bitter to anyone who can get pregnant easily and please don't hesitate to tell me if you are pregnant...I promise I will be happy for you. I only mention it so you understand that we aren't the same way--and it doesn't mean we are waiting until Beau finishes school, or until I advance more in my career.

I wanted to lay this out there because I don't want infertility to be some sort of dirty word. It's a medical condition. I will talk to anyone about it who asks, I'm not ashamed. There may be physical issues but it doesn't mean we aren't worthy to be blessed with a family....it just means our bodies are in a fallen state, just like everyone else. We get stronger everyday and we aren't sad or angry about anything, so you don't need to feel sorry for us. We will have a family when the time is right for everything to work out.

Reading Adventures

Let's start this off with the wonderful announcement that I got an iPad for our anniversary in April. I happen to adore my new found toy, I think it is the most wonderful thing to hit this green planet since Limeade lipgloss.

I love reading, it was the main thing that drew me toward our new pet iPad. The first app I downloaded was iBooks. Not only are there millions of books for sale in the iBooks store, there are around 30,000 free classics as well. Most of these are books from the Gutenberg Project, an online database of classic literature, royalty free I might add :)

I couldn't resist immediately sticking my hand in the free bookie jar. I started where any girl should, Jane Austin. I had previously read only Pride and Prejudice. What a delight. I couldn't put them down, I just love getting to happy endings.

Next I decided to purchase some books. I turned to Oprah's book club list and chose The Pillars of the Earth for my next read. Let's just say Oprah and I don't have the same taste...I was so disturbed by situations in this book that I stopped reading half way through. I'm not a quitter, so I decided to save myself the horror of having to read the rest and looked up a summary online so I could know how everything turned out. That doesn't count as quitting right? I'm creative in getting out of situations I don't like without exactly quitting. If you ever feel tempted to read this book, just don't.

Beau is getting antsy, so I will continue my adventures in reading soon. Sorry if this bored you, but reading is one of my favorite activities these days.

The Past Month

This is hard to finally write but my mother passed away a little over three weeks ago. I'm sure almost everyone who is reading this was already aware but I want to share a couple things with all of you.

First of all, I can't express enough how supportive and loving everyone has been to my family. People who I barely know have given us the most amazing support, love, and kindness that I have seen in a long time. Everyone always wants to talk about how horrible the world is, but after what I have witnessed in the past few weeks that is hard for me to believe. Everyone close to me has been amazing as well. I truly appreciate your love, prayers, and support more than you can ever imagine.

Second, my family and I are doing amazingly well. We still laugh together, love one another and more importantly, love our Heavenly Father. There are times when I get sad enough to get to tears, but those are brief and getting longer in between. My dad is doing okay as well. He is doing the best he can to look to the future with hope. As I sit back and look at the whole situation and how many consider it tragic a few things come to mind. My mother was a wonderful, loving, spiritual, caring person and that is what is most comforting to us. I know she is spreading her love and joy to everyone she is meeting on the other side. I know that the covenants that bind her to my family are eternal, we will all see her again. Also, she made me and my family strong and her strength isn't something that departed with her death. She has left us with everything we need to continue.

Third, I know Heavenly Father's plan is eternal. It is often hard to look past this life. But through all of this I find it much easier to feel the love of Heavenly Father and feel gratitude for His Son, who makes it possible for us all to live forever with our families. A couple of months ago I read the Chronicles of Narnia the end of the last book made me realize how glorious and amazing it will be to see all the works and plans of our Heavenly Father be fulfilled. When we are all together again with everyone we love, friends and family, in the wondrous realms above we will look back to times like these and smile. Knowing that the Plan has made us into what we needed to become.

I hope someday I will be able to help you as much as you have helped me.

Another Update

I also chopped off my hair and highlighted it...I will post pictures of that soon too!

Fall Time

It is officially my favorite time of year. Thinking back I'm pretty sure I say that every time the season changes because I love seasons. But I really love the crisp air, Halloween, beautiful colors, dramatic sunsets...it is just wonderful. I'm finding out I married into a family that really doesn't love Halloween, so I've been looking for ways to ease Beau into my 3rd favorite holiday. I'm trying to figure out what we should be for Halloween, or if anything is even going on for old married people like us. I made an Autumn wreath to stick on our front door yesterday, it's pretty adorable if I do say so myself. I'm going to keep the basic wreath and re-decorate it for the changing seasons-WOW fun. I will take pictures when it is up so everyone can see!

Summer Days Drifiting Away

Where has the summer gone, I can't believe it is already August. Even more crazy is the fact that we are only managing the apartments for another week or so. WOW. Now we are going to be big kids and move in somewhere that doesn't belong to my parents and where we actually pay rent. We have done a lot of fun things this summer, we went down to Lagoon, camped with my parents, and went to the Bradley family reunion. Was that an experience, the biggest thing I got from that is I can (or think I can...) name Beau's 11 aunts and uncles (12 Bradley children including Beau's pappa-yowza) and their perspective spouses. I never imagined I would have such a large family. We had a bit of fun on the way up when we drove Beau's parents truck. I knew I should have listened to my dad, he always told me Fords were bad news. Below was the outcome.




We sat in Teton Idaho, in a church parking lot, in our camping chairs, until Beau's cousin Scott came and rescued us from Rigby. The funny part is the next day when they went back to fix it, it worked perfectly....stupid truck! That was an adventure. We got to go on a big hike at Targhee I didn't eat a very big breakfast because I didn't think it would be a long hike since the whole clan was going but it turned out to be a pretty good one. I was pretty tired at the top but the views were amazing. We would have had a great view of the Tetons at the top if it weren't beginning to rain freezing cold rain. Luckily, we got to ride the ski lift down the hill so we didn't have to walk down. Unluckily, the rain really started to hit hard when we got on so Beau's two young cousins and I rode it down for 15 minutes and were soaked and freezing by the end. We drank hot cocoa in a shop at the bottom...in July.


Please note the looming clouds

The next day we had the Bradley Family Olympics...a time honored tradition. I am proud to say that Beau and I took first place in the baby burp contest...basically Beau had to carry me then I had to down root beer and burp..which wasn't hard because I'm not used to carbonation...at all. We also filled like 300 water balloons and shot them up in the air while people tried to catch them. Quite entertaining! The weekend was a fun time, I managed to survive without running water (which is usually my one camping necessity)

Now we are getting ready to move again. I am looking forward to staying put for awhile.

Cruel Blog World

Well I used to think I was good with computers...until tonight. I can't get the header to look right, I can't put drop shadows or even outlines around the text in front of our picture, I can't figure out how to change the justification of the font in the headers...ugh...For some odd reason I can't edit or make anything look good without Photoshop or Illustrator. So this is my sad try at making our blog look "pretty".

Updates:
Beau is currently studying for his summer school final...which is tomorrow! Yippie! It's somewhat odd and cruel that when I graduated I married a Freshman, but Beau is worth going through another 6-12 years of school with--I kinda like him :) I'm excited for him to be done for the summer so we won't worry about homework for a couple months. I am working at ICCU as a Training and Marketing Specialist. We are both managing apartments for the Summer which can be an interesting experience at times, but we are getting along fine. We are on the search for apartments now, because we will be moving around the 15th of August....for the 3rd time in 4 months. We have two pet fish, a guppy named Pee-Wee and a Beta named Keyto (it means sea goddess or something...yup Beau and I researched Fish names)

We went camping this weekend with my family in Island Park, which was fun. Besides the mosquitos that bit me about 12 times. They were EVERYWHERE!! Ugh...and if any of you have seen a bite on me before, you know the freakish way they swell up...I even got bit on my nose...what stupid mosquito tried to suck blood out of my dang nose. Well actually, come to think of it, I had a certain cheer accident that made a lot of blood come out of my nose...a lot, maybe that blood sucker wasn't so stupid after all. It was fun to be around my nieces and nephew though. They are kind of adorable!

HOW HAVE I NOT MENTIONED THIS YET...I had THE most exciting start to a day ever! I was driving to work this morning when I heard a radio station ask a question for people to call in and answer for a prize. I called in with the right answer and won two free movie tickets and a free pizza! YAHOOO! I was bursting with happiness when I got to work!

That should be enough of my mind's ramblings for now. Happy Birthday Julie, I'm blogging!