By Adam on April 22nd, 2012

Our Birthday Adventures

Sarah and I have birthdays very close to each other, and we celebrated several weeks ago. Our awesome families sent us fun packages with gifts and we got each other some fun stuff. Sarah got me a model rocket of the SpaceX Falcon 9, some space patches (which I collect) and she’s making me a fun fleece blanket. (Isn’t she awesome!) Sarah’s family sent us a Michael Buble song book and a cool book by Dr. Minert about Latter-day Saints in Germany during World War II.

Sarah loves making cakes and so she made one for each of our birthdays. She made an awesome German Chocolate cake from scratch for me. It even had scratch frosting!!

For her birthday she insisted that she be able to make her own cake, and so she made a delicious white cake with strawberry filling and strawberry-whipped-cream frosting. It was divine!

I decided to throw Sarah a surprise party this year too. I’d been planning it for months, and lots of our good friends were coming. I took her out to dinner on the Saturday after her birthday, and we had a good dinner for the most part. I gave a key to out house to a friend so people could get in for the party while we were at dinner. Half way through the dinner, however, the friend with the key set off our home alarm system, and the cops showed up. I swear that I had given her a good code, and I was a bit upset that I had to talk to the cop while I was at dinner. (Fortuitously Sarah was away from the table at the time, so she was none the wiser:)) When we got back to the house all our friends were there, and she was really surprised! We have awesome friends, and they brought a cake and filled up balloons. We had a good night playing games and socializing. We’re so grateful for all of the awesome friends that we have here.

Anyways, I hope I didn’t toot my own horn too much in this post, but we did have a fun weekend for our birthdays!

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By Adam on March 25th, 2012

Gratitude

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our life and how awesome it really is. I hope you’ll forgive me for just writing some of my feelings publicly. I’m sometimes not very good at showing how grateful I am to the Lord for my blessings. I really have so many blessings that I’m sure that I could go on and on. I just want to list a few:

  • I have an amazing, strong, beautiful, talented, smart, good wife.
  • I have a place to live and spend my time.
  • I live in a place where people are generally good and friendly.
  • We have had way more rain this winter here in Texas than we were supposed to. I know the Lord’s hand was in that.
  • I have great co-workers who are friendly and supportive.
  • I have friends who care and try to stay in touch.
  • I have great parents who love me.
  • I have amazing in-laws who raised my wonderful wife and who are supportive of our decisions.
  • I have two awesome missionary siblings who are off having the time of their lives.
  • I have a good job.
  • I can sing.
  • I am able to walk.
  • I have sufficient food to eat.
  • I have a knowledge of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
  • I have the knowledge that I can live with my sweetheart for eternity if I am worthy.
  • I get to work with awesome Cub Scouts in my church calling.

I hope that I can remember to be grateful more often. I have many more blessings that just these. Some are too personal to share and others are too many to list in the few minutes that I have today. I’m grateful for all of the blessings that I have. I know that these blessings come from God and that I am His son.

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By Adam on October 22nd, 2011

We have a house!

So we’ve been looking for a more permanent place to live here in Austin. Currently we’re renting from a great couple that we met last summer when we were doing our internship, but we’ve been wanting to find our own place where we can start “putting down some roots.” (Are we really old enough to put down roots?) When we got here earlier this year, we started working with our Realtor John Mick who has done a superb job of educating us on how buying homes work in Texas. We’ve been looking around for quite a while. We’ve seen lots of resales and lots of new homes and we finally decided on this one!

We’re so excited to be moving to this awesome home! We’re hoping to move sometime in December and start our new life in Pflugerville, Texas!!! We have a walk-through video tour that we can send you if you email us for the link!

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By Adam on September 5th, 2011

A Garden Update

Our garden is growing! We have harvested a lot of asparagus so far (some of it was a bit woody at first, but it’s getting better). Our tomatoes are blooming and hopefully getting pollinated. Our zucchini is growing as expected . . . like a weed. And our yellow squash turned out to have two varieties. Our pepper starts survived the onslaught of aphids and fire ants and are growing again now, and our peppers from seed are growing! This is a grand adventure!

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By Adam on July 31st, 2011

Exercising Our “Green Thumb”

I’ve been told that one of my ancestors was the gardener for the King of Norway. I have absolutely no idea if this is actually true, but there must have been someone in my family who at least enjoyed working with dirt because I’ve always loved gardening and working with plants. Even my high school science fair project had to do with gardening! When we found out that the place we’re renting would have four “square foot gardens,” I was excited! Ever since we moved in, I’ve been wanting to start working in them. The people we’re renting from told us about this website that told us what we could plant when. I was grateful for this because we’ve obviously never gardened in Texas before! We found out that this was a good time to start some of the plants that we wanted to do so this week we finally started our garden!

Last week we looked at WalMart and Home Depot for some tomato and pepper plants but didn’t find any. The other day I found out about the Shoal Creek Nursery close to downtown that we decided to check out to see if they had what we needed. They had a ton of stuff!

We decided to plant four things (didn’t want to be too ambitious our first time around!). We bought four tomato starts from the nursery and two yellow pepper starts. We wanted to get some green pepper starts, but they didn’t have any, so we decided to try to do green peppers from seed. I’ve never done that before, but the guy at the nursery told us that it shouldn’t be too hard. We’ll see.

We also decided to do some squash. Squash isn’t usually my favorite thing to eat, but I’m learning! We planted some zucchini and some yellow squash. (I really hope the zucchini doesn’t take over our house!)

I hope that the drought that we’re having right now in Texas doesn’t kill our little garden. We’ll definitely be praying for rain. I’m excited to have this garden and to start eating some real home-grown food!

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By Sarah on July 17th, 2011

Grateful?

Since Adam’s job is the reason for our move to Texas, we had our things moved “professionally.” Everything got packed up on June 23, loaded onto the moving truck and taken to a warehouse on June 24, and was supposed to arrive at our new house by July 7 at the very latest. (We were warned that since this is the busiest time of the year, our delivery window was twelve days–from June 26 to July 7.)

That so didn’t happen.

We still don’t have our things. Apparently they’re supposed to come by this Tuesday, July 19 (fingers crossed!), but we’re trying to not get our hopes up too much. The moving coordinator that we’ve worked with has been less than helpful, but she worked it out so that we’ll be paid $125 for each day our household goods are late. (That’s nice and all–by July 19 it will be $1500–but we’d kind of rather have our belongings…)

There’s a lot to complain about it. Waa waa waaaaaaaaaaaaa.

. . . so I decided that we need to make a list of some of the positive things and things we’re grateful for concerning our move. Ready?

  • We packed a lot of things (12 days worth of clothing (we didn’t know how long it’d be before we got our washer and dryer), our computer and printer, a desk and chair, four place settings of dishes, our medicine box, and an air mattress, to name a few) that keep us fairly occupied and more comfortable than if we didn’t have all those things. Thankfully, when we were packing up all those things before we moved, Adam had the foresight to realize that we should bring a lot of stuff to keep us occupied (just in case). We’ve still been kinda bored, but not as bored as we could have been! It has also been nice for Adam to have more than one tie and for me to have more than one dress to wear to church every week.
  • We have internet. A connection to the outside world. Hallelujah!
  • We met our nice neighbor, a man in his seventies, who offered to let us borrow his ironing board, sleeve board, and clothes steamer…and anything else we might possibly need.
  • I’ve learned a lot of creative ways to cook when your dishes are limited.
  • Someone had vision to create microwaveable food. As gross as it can be, it has kept us fed several times these past few weeks!
  • We do have an oven and stove.
  • We’re better than camping. Our air mattress is on carpet, AND we have easy-access indoor plumbing.
  • We have ipods. That means hours of entertainment.
  • Facetime.
  • Music! To sing and listen to.
  • We’ve had a lot of time to think.
  • We have cell phones, which means we can call our family, friends, and doctors. (I’m soooo glad we don’t have to communicate only through snail mail and horse-riding messengers.)
  • We have a car! That works!
  • We live five miles from the nearest Family History Center, and they already have some good German resources. Hooray!
  • I’ve only had to kill one spider and one cockroach so far. (Adam killed a spider too.) :)
  • We’ve discovered some fun restaurants, donut shops (Round Rock Donuts!), movie theaters, and furniture stores. Good to remember for later on.
  • We brought our violins with us (we didn’t want them packed…not so good for the instruments…), and Adam printed out the Bach Double Concerto in d minor so we could play it. I had a copy of Mozart’s Tabletop music too. We had fun sight-reading, and we got to remember how rusty we are. :) It was fun though! We hadn’t played together before ever.
  • The people in our ward are really friendly. Some friends had us over for dinner last Sunday, and it was great. :)
  • We’ve lived here before, so we know where the grocery store and Wal-Mart are located.
  • Netflix. :)
  • We are now Texas citizens basically. We have Texas drivers’ licenses and license plates.
  • Our AC works now!
  • Popsicles and ice cream and root beer floats.
  • We live close to the pharmacy, which was a big blessing earlier this week.
  • Five Crowns (a great card game).
  • The Texas sky is SO BIG and has BEAUTIFUL sunsets.
  • I now have all but one of my textbooks for my last three undergraduate classes!
  • Our new air mattress stays inflated the entire night. (That’s twice as good as our previous air mattress…)
  • The extra $1500 is going straight into savings for a house. That’ll be nice.
  • Adam has a real job, for goodness sake! That means a real salary, real benefits, and real life. And security. That is so nice.
  • We live only about seventy miles/two hours from the nearest temple, and I already got to attend it with a few ladies from the ward last week. :)
  • We have the gospel! We’re members of the Church!
  • We’re a family! Aaah! Isn’t that the best?!

 

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By Sarah on July 17th, 2011

Life Just Got Cleaner

Tuesday was a great day.

We have a washer and dryer! Hooray!

(I really like doing laundry, actually, so this is a cause for celebration.)

We actually got our washer and dryer delivered last week, but because of some sort of mix-up, Sears delivered a silver washer and a white dryer. We wanted our appliances to match, so Sears agreed to deliver a silver dryer. Thankfully the Sears people said we could use both the washer and dryer until our silver dryer got delivered. After a whole fiasco about prices, we finally got our silver dryer today! :)

And they must be good–I even saw a commercial for them yesterday. ;)

Yay for clean laundry!

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By Sarah on July 17th, 2011

Our Last Weekend in Utah

Here’s a little breakdown of what we did during our last weekend in Utah:

Thursday

  • Finished packing up things we needed to bring with us to Austin.
  • Watched the packers pack all of our things.
  • Ate Del Taco for lunch.
  • Went to Adam’s eye appointment.
  • Both got our hair cut by our friend, Nicole.
  • Went to the Manti Pageant with my family in their big blue van. Ate delicious, homemade 9-inch corn dogs.
  • Rode with my family back from Manti.
  • Picked up things from our apartment and drove to my family’s house to spend the night (since our bed was inaccessible).
  • Slept

Friday

  • Got up early and drove back to our apartment.
  • Adam got our car checked out and new brake … put on.
  • Watched the packers load everything into a truck. …and break one of our dinner table chairs.
  • Cleaned our apartment with Adam’s sweet mother, who brought some cleaning supplies for us to use.
  • Went to Adam’s family’s house and cleaned up ourselves.
  • Watched How to Train Your Dragon with Adam’s family.
  • Slept

Saturday

  • Slept in a titch…ahhhh.
  • …did something….
  • Went to the Provo Temple. It was wonderful!!
  • Said “see ya later” to my dear friend, Becca.
  • Ran to Macey’s grocery store.
  • Went to a family reunion for my dad’s side. It was so sweet.
  • Went to my friend’s wedding reception in American Fork and then to Adam’s friend’s wedding reception in Provo.
  • Went back to my family’s house and did laundry at 10:30pm.
  • Slept

Sunday

  • Got up early.
  • Went to the dear old American Fork 1st ward (my old ward) to see my longest-time friend speak in church after returning from her mission in Manila, Philippines. (That is where Adam served too, so he really enjoyed her talk.)
  • Hastily said hello and goodbye to many friends.
  • Sped down to the BYU Family History Center to teach our Sunday School class about the resources there…but no one showed up, so we did some of our own research because we didn’t have anything else to do until our church started.
  • Went to our ward and taught our last family history Sunday School class.
  • Went to my dear friend, Jenny’s, apartment and said “see ya later.”
  • Went to my family’s house. We had a sweet experience together, but it was really hard too. You see, Adam and I are the first in both of our families to move away from our families permanently. My family has lots of girls, and we’re all kind of emotional softies, so it was a bittersweet experience.
  • Said “see ya later” to part of my family.
  • Went to Adam’s family’s house.
  • Ate dinner.
  • Gave a wedding gift to Adam’s old roommate, Peter, who stopped by the Arnesen’s house.
  • Said “see ya later” to our good friends Brian and Devri and their son, who also stopped by the Arnesen’s house.
  • Spent time with Adam’s family.
  • Slept.

Monday

  • Got up before the crack of dawn.
  • Packed up our car.
  • Ate breakfast.
  • Said “see ya later” to my dad, who came by the Arnesen’s house.
  • Said “see ya later” to Adam’s family.
  • Swung by my family’s house to get the atlas.
  • Said “see ya later” to my family.
  • Drove…all day.
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By Sarah on July 11th, 2011

Spring Term

Spring term was an adventure. I’ve never done a spring term before. The term ran from April 26 to June 16. I enrolled for two classes: an internship and an advanced writing history class.

I interned with a company located in downtown Salt Lake City called ProGenealogists. They are a professional family history research firm. I was able to do some Germanic family history research as well as a lot of U.S. research. Overall, it was a good experience. I learned a lot about what I do want to do when I take on clients….and some things that I don’t want to do. Like I said, it was a good experience, and I learned a lot. :)

I completed 120 hours for my internship. I usually slept on and rode the bus to and from SLC three times a week.

The other class I took–the advanced history writing class–was…an experience. In six weeks, the four students in the class were asked to each write a 25-35 page history paper that dealt with U.S. foreign relations and was worthy of publication. While it was an interesting class, I struggled to write my paper. (My topic: why Great Britain didn’t interfere in the American Civil war. Interesting, right? I thought so–and it was interesting, but I had far too little time to do all of the research I needed to do.) Somehow I squeaked out a C-grade in the class, for which I will be eternally grateful. However, I do not recommend taking that class during spring term if you 1) are taking other classes, 2) are burned out, 3) are getting ready to move across the country, or 4) want to do anything besides school during spring term.

Anyway, spring term was a good experience, and I’m grateful that I could be stretched so much. I learned so much. And my sweet husband, Adam, worked long-distance (at home) during all that time so that I could take my classes and earn a degree. Poor guy. He got kind of bored being alone at home all day. He even turned in two of my papers for me because they were due at times when I needed to be at my internship. What a wonderful man. :)

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By Sarah on July 7th, 2011

BYU Graduation

Adam and I graduated! (Well, I sort of did…read on.) Adam got a master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Adam and I walked together in the College of Engineering convocation ceremony. (I will technically be done by Thanksgiving. I took two classes during spring term and have three online classes to finish before Thanksgiving. Then I’ll have a BA in Family History and Genealogy. I’m almost there! Hooray!)

Winter semester was crazy. Adam wrote and defended his master’s thesis. He worked so hard on his thesis! That was about all he did for three weeks straight. He really had enough information to make it a doctoral dissertation, but we felt like he should just finish his master’s degree for right now. Adam’s angel mother is an excellent editor, and she edited Adam’s thesis several times. I am so proud of Adam for working so hard and for finishing that 148-page work!

I did oodles of research during winter semester. (It’s what family historians do!) I was in a seminar in professional family history research class (like a practicum for family history majors involving four 25-hour research projects), an advanced German research class (where I got to learn some awesome things about my own immigrant ancestor), and a beginning Hispanic research class. (I have no Hispanic ancestors. Germanic and U.S. Midwest family history are my emphases, but since I knew we were going to move to Texas, I figured it would be helpful to know at least a little bit about Hispanic family history research.) On top of these classes, I also had a German language class and Concert Choir. I traveled to the Family History Library usually once or twice a week. By the end of the semester, I logged over 200 hours of research. Honestly, it was a miracle that I survived and somehow got it all done. Adam supported me in everything that I did, and I am so grateful for his patience with me while I was running around all the time.

Anyway, the graduation ceremony was wonderful. Elder Richard G. Scott spoke to the graduates. He gave some wonderful advice. I love how sensitive and sweet Elder Scott is. :)

After the ceremony, Adam and I rang the BYU victory bell together! It was so cool (and loud)! I got a picture with Dr. Minert. He mentored me through most of my undergraduate work and is the only professor who teaches Germanic Family History in the United States. I was also able to work for him for two years. I feel so blessed to have gone to the same university where he teaches! (What are the chances of that?? I had no idea that I would focus so much on Germanic family history when I declared my major.)

After all our picture-taking, Adam and I were starving. We didn’t want to try to find a restaurant that didn’t have a long wait, so we went to the Wendy’s drive-through and got dinner. Then we went to the Malt Shop drive-through for delicious shakes. Mmmm. We went home and ate dinner while watching a movie.

Studying at BYU has been a great blessing in our lives. The time passed so quickly! We’re grateful that we were able to spend so much time learning and improving ourselves there. We know that the things we learned and the experiences we had will bless us for the rest of our lives and that they have prepared us for the mission we have ahead of us.

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