It's been too long

Wow! it has been just over a month since either of us have posted on here.
Since the last post...

We made it through finals. That was such a relief and fortunately the grades weren't as bad as we thought.

We celebrated Jared's birthday. My family was very sweet and they made Jared a birthday cake with all the candles on it! He was thrilled and still talks about how he should have set off the smoke alarms. 

My brother Creed and I introduced Jared to the joys of riding the 4-Wheeler when there is a fresh layer of snow in the field next to my parents' house.

We took our first vacation together and celebrated our first Christmas together in Texas with all of Jared's family (Except Colton who is in the MTC)


While there we ate, watched movies, played games, ate, shopped, ate some more, went on a bike ride, cruised the town looking at Christmas lights, ate again, watched cute family videos, played Whirly Ball, ate a little more, played Lazar Tag, were extremely entertained by our four nephews, and did I mention we at a lot of YUMMY food? Over all it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the opportunity to feel more a part of the Heath family.

riding in our "sleigh" while looking at the Christmas lights

 

our cute nephews

This was quite the challenge to get them all looking and not crying

Accessory heaven! this store was like a big warehouse of any kind of accessory you could think of

in case you though to yourself "what is whirly ball?" this is it

 After the ten day trip we were able to return to our home. It was a fun trip but it was nice to go home to our very own place.
 Speaking of our own place, we finally found a solution to our heat problem! We don't get to control our heat, it's connected with three other apartments so the landlord controls it. This means our apartment was always HOT and all we could do was open the windows. Does anyone else see a problem with that picture? It's 30 degrees outside and we were opening windows. We decided to just turn off the valve to our heaters and live off the heat that came up from downstairs. This seemed like an ingenious idea until after three days of the temperature in our apartment slowly dropping and finally getting to the point where I was bundled from head to toe and would never let Jared touch me with his cold hands. Then the perfect solution came. We turn on two of our heaters and keep the one in our room and the bathroom off. Now we have reached a happy medium and I can sleep again.
Now to solve the problem of Jared getting too cold at night because he is by the window.....

We are now two weeks into our last semester of school. So far we think it is going to be a great semester. Jared is taking 10 credits, working 20 hours at Performing Arts Management, and then however many hours he can manage on his freelance job. I am taking 6 credits, working 20 hours as a research assistant, and hoping to keep our house a little more in order and actual meals made for dinner more often.

So far we are enjoying our daily routine of getting up at 6 AM, going to work out, getting ready for the day,being on campus by 9 or 10 AM, then going home around 5 PM, eating dinner, doing homework, accomplishing other random tasks, and then ideally getting to bed by 10 or 10:30.

Life is good!