Back in Utah!!

It seems like the time in St. Louis was long, long ago! Yet here we are, back in Utah... and hopefully to stay! Ryan didn't end up needing to participate in the second half of his program, and so we decided to come back home so he can get everything started for his business in Dog Training.
              I am all set to start Nursing school at SLCC in January 2013, so this year is going to be a year of working and saving up money before it's time to go back to school! Right now, i am waiting on getting a job. I have applied pretty much everywhere: IHC, St. Mark's Hospital, and the U hospital too. I haven't heard a whole lot yet but i am attributing that to the busy holiday time and hope to have a job soon!
            Ryan is doing a good job of getting things started. He is so great with dogs and it has been so fun to see the difference he can make. We are excited for his reputation to grow so he can have more work to do and be able to eventually move on to bigger dreams and ambitions in the dog training area.
                  Here is the fun picture that Ryan put on his Resume.

I love the Christmas season and how it brings our minds to Christ, his life, and all the blessings that we have.  I think it goes hand in hand with new years resolutions, and causes us to realize the things we should change and move towards in the next year. I am going to try to become a little bit of a better blogger, so hopefully there will be more posts on this blog next year than there were this year. (and hopefully more pictures too... we are going to work on taking more fun pictures, so that we can save some more memories of the fun times that we have!)
          We were so glad to spend Christmas at home with our family!! Here are a couple of Christmas pictures!

Decorating the Gingerbread house

 

Making Schlieferlies

Adventures!!

We have been so busy the last few weeks, it hardly seems real that we are here! After lots of hard work and stress, we managed to get all moved into our apartment in St. Louis! Today was the official end of moving in, as we unpacked the last box!! We are so grateful to Mom and Dad Olsen for helping us drive all our stuff... It was a bit scary sometimes traveling with that big trailer. They are Superstars and we love them!!! It was a great help to have them here with us, not only for their physical work, but to help us feel more comfortable in our neighborhood and our new ward. 

Our drive out here was a little stressful because we found out that the highway taking us into Missouri on our route was closed due to river flooding. So we had to do a little re-routing, and ended up doing a lot of driving through some Nebraska farmland. Thank goodness for our GPS systems, or else it would have been a lot more difficult to make it here!!

       After arriving here in St. Louis, we spent 4 hours unpacking and then finished in time to take a quick swim in our new pool! it felt great to relax and have fun. However, our apartment didn't have any hot water(Until this morning), and so the cold showers haven't been very fun. I am looking forward to my first hot shower here.

       On Saturday returned the trailer and did some shopping for groceries and for some other basic needs for our new home. We spent the rest of the day working on more unpacking and organizing.  

      It was great to go to church on Sunday! We are so lucky that our ward is very close to our apartment. Its about 3 miles away. The minute we sat down in the chapel, we had a bunch of people come right up to us and talk to us and get to know who we are. I guess they have a lot of medical students in that area, and so they have had a lot of new families lately. I am so glad to live in an area where the people are so friendly and accepting.  After church, we had some lunch and then we went to downtown St. Louis and did some sight seeing!

Gateway Arch

This Statue is NOT supposed to be under water...

At the Temple

( the temple is really quite close to us too, between 10-15 minutes )

Here is the virtual Tour of our apartment! As you walk in the door, you see our living room

To the left is the dining area and the Kitchen

 Our awesome brick wall. I love this part of our apartment. :)

 Down the hall leads to our bathroom, bedroom, and the study area/ doggie bedroom

 And that's it!! :)

A Year of Big Accomplishments!

Its already almost the end of February! WOW!!! Time is going by so fast!
Even though there have only been a few months this year, we are getting a lot of goals met; some have been planned, and some things have just kind of happened out of the blue!
    First of all, Ryan is back in school! YAY! And he is loving it!  He gets up and goes to class every day and he does all his work and studying without(a whole lot) of reminding. Ryan also is all recovered from getting his tonsils out. Hopefully this means the rest of this year will be a lot better healthwise for Ryan.
     We successfully sold the Truck, and now we are able to save more money every month! It has been hard to live off only one car, but it is totally worth it! :) The list just keeps going and going... It is so hard to believe this, but I have stopped drinking soda!!!! I thought it would be really hard to stop, but it hasn't been bad. Now i don't even want to drink one when i get thirsty! Even better, because i don't drink as much soda, Ryan isn't drinking as much either. We drink much more water, and juice, and other things that are much healthier!! This is a big step towards one of our resoultions which is to become more healthy and fit. Next week begins the exercise process, so hopefully we will be able to keep going!
     We are both so happy with life right now. Just living and working and LIFE IS GOOD! i just realized how many exclamation points i used in this post, but i love it.


.... We are horrible at taking pictures, but that is another goal for this year. Hopefully soon we will  have more pictures to document our fun times! .....