Easter Cards

So this is what we sent to our parents in Easter cards this year (its a Mad Gab, if you couldn't figure it out):

WEAR HALF INK ABE ABE BEE!!!!

Cool huh?

Yea that's what we thought too :)

Ramblings...

So it has been a while...and I don't have much to say.

But I bought these shoes.

I'm sorry if you don't believe me, but I did it. Not normal for me, but I did it. We'll see how many times I wear them. They make walking quite difficult for me. But I bought them for a reason. And Brett liked them. He actually picked them out. I had seen them and walked right by not even thinking of trying them on. 

They were the first ones he picked.

So I did it.

And I bought them.

And it was a fun night at the dining out.

Also, Hawaii is getting closer. We actually got our tickets today. So it is for sure now. We're going whether we like it or not. But we like it anyway. :)

Other than that...

We brought our truck to St. Louis to get shipped to Hawaii so it will be there when we get there

We are driving a manual car right now. I get scared I'm going to back into someone on a hill every time I get in the car to go somewhere. But we're blessed to have a car, and Brett's parents are wonderful for letting us use it.

We are living with barely anything in the house. Our living room looks kind of funny.

We're hoping all of our stuff makes it to one place in Hawaii...storage in UT, TN, and here.

Brett graduates on Friday!

Little Ones...

I don't know if I have mentioned this at all, but I got called to the Nursery in our ward here in Missouri.

Love at first sight.

How many people get called to spend their church hours learning from 15 of the cutest children - the ones the Lord has always told us that we are to be like in order to truly come to him? I love Sunday School and Relief Society, don't get me wrong, because I love to learn. But not everyone gets to be called to the Nursery.

And I have been blessed.

Someday... when I have a little boy, I want to hang this in his room...

And if I have a little girl...this one...

I can't look at these and not realize how blessed I am to have children in my life. Even if they aren't mine.

I Love Long Weekends

We just got through Brett's last four-day weekend here in Missouri. I'm going miss these long weekends. A lot.

I was in NH for the whole week before, 

and I even missed Valentine's Day. We aren't doing well with these "love celebrations." We weren't together on our anniversary last summer either. Guess that's just how we roll... :)

But I left Brett little surprises for when he got home from his week out in the field. And he left me surprises for when I got home. (Rose petals, candy, and roses all through the house)

 I love him.

Lots and lots.

So we took our last chance and went to the Missouri church sites for the weekend with our friends. We started in Independence, went to Liberty Jail, then Far West, Adam-ondi-Ahman, and Haun's Mill. It was a perfectly wonderful weekend. It is amazing the spirit of the people that you can feel in these places. Adam-ondi-Ahman was still beautiful, even in the middle of the winter when the trees and the fields are brown. And it was probably my favorite stop of the trip. There are no guides are tours or anything. It is just peaceful, and perfect. I know nothing is perfect, but I think I can describe the feelings there as just that. Perfect. 

This one I thought was cute...it's our friend's daughter.

To finish off our long weekend I got to go running with Brett. Happy happy day. I haven't gotten to do that in a long time because of his training, and I forgot until yesterday how much I love it.

And I got to hold his hand all day everyday.

What could be better than that?

Two more things...sorry this is so long. I just procrastinate doing this for long periods of time.

It snowed before I went to NH...so we built a snowman family! This was the first, and the tallest.

 And we don't have a sled so we used our recycling bin and sledded down the street :) I think he looks like one of Sid's toys from Toy Story from behind.

 Well that's all for now. Lots of love to you all :)

Snow and Ice

It snowed and iced ALL day yesterday. Things I loved:

Brett was home all day with me.

The car doors were frozen shut.

Watching Brett do donuts and slide around the cul-de-sac we live on.

Snow.

That the plows didn't come out for hours. Strange. (At least compared to NH)

Everything was closed. Well mostly. Except for Wal-Mart.

Trees with snow on them.

The three or four layers of ice on the car.

Huge snow drifts in the road from the wind.

Walking on top of the snow because of the layers of ice and snow mixed. 

And snow.

Snow :)

He was trying to break the ice off the door and handle so it would open....

I don't know if you can tell, but that ice was stubborn.

 

 

 Oh yes. And our neighbors probably hate us. Well mostly me. Because this is what happens (see picture below) when you mix a bed on wheels + Brett tickling me + Brett not knowing what the word STOP means + Brett trying to tickle my feet and me STRONGLY disliking my feet being tickled because it's torture so I slither away as much as I can so he can't reach them + I laugh really loud and yell at him because it's just not nice... :)

Sorry for the unmade bed. But yes, it is supposed to be over by the nightstand.

But he makes me laugh. So it's okay.

In all of living have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.

President Gordon B. Hinckley

Pictures...as Promised

So I told you in the last post that I would get some pictures up. So for those of you who have never been near a tornado can see what lovely things it throws around. I'm just glad I can laugh about it. It just seems weird to me that our house got blown down by a tornado. Just kind of makes me laugh a little but, because it doesn't sound true. Anyway...here you go.

So before we got access to the street, Brett looked at the mess and said, "I think that's our house right there. The one that's gone." And I was like, "No I think ours still has its roof!"


And this is how wrong I was. And how right Brett was. We were sitting in the driveway across the street trying to figure out where to start. That is what was our house. Ta da! Welcome to our home :)

We could look through the front door into the backyard! It's not everyday that you get to do that!

And this was the state of the front door when we found it.

 These are some of Brett's clothes frozen to themselves, mud, pieces of sheetrock...some were frozen to the floor.

But my tupperware survived quite nicely. If they hadn't been in the box I don't know what would have happened to them. But they survived the tornado.

And the last picture is of my attempt to dry out all of my papers of quotes and things that I have saved for a long time. They dried...but the stack is huge now. If you've ever tried to stack dried out paper, you know what I am talking about.

Well there's a little taste for you. Hope those suffice.

Life is great. Great Great Great.

Cute husband.

Cute sisters.

 

 

 

Funny brothers.

Amazing family.

Not in Kansas Anymore

So let me tell you a story. Once upon a time we lived in a hotel for a month while we looked for other housing. Then, on the last day before vacation we found a house! It was lovely; newly redone and everything. It even had a dishwasher, which we haven't had since we were single. I know that's only a couple of years, but it was quite exciting to find out. So, we moved all of our clothes and boxes into the house, put Brett's newly licensed motorcycle into the shed, and left for Tennessee and New Hampshire for a wonderful Christmas and New Years.

We spent Christmas with Brett's family. We got to go caroling on Christmas Eve, which I love doing. On Christmas I got TWO pairs of slippers. Hooray :) And a new camera. Our poor old one can finally be put to rest. It has been through a lot. It even survived me dropping it into a pool of water on a hike in Zion's National Park. It was so good to me. We got to spend the day after Christmas with Brett's extended family, and that is always just fun.

Then we drove to St. Louis to fly to New Hampshire and spend some time and the New Years with my family. We actually got in to the airport on time. The storms in the Northeast had mostly past. The plane landing made me sick though...way too many bumps and jolts for my liking. But the storms meant snow, which meant sledding, and ice, and a wonderful sleigh ride pulled by horses through the woods. It was so nice to be home. Who knows when I'll get to be back for a week again. I love New Hampshire. :)

Then on New Years day after we found out that the water heater was broken and we had no hot water, and Brett went with my dad to get a new one to put in, I got a call from him, and this is how it went. 

B: "So the base got hit by a tornado."

C: "What?"

B: "Yea I've gotten a ton of calls because we all have to report and make sure everyone is okay."

C: "Oh good."

B: "Oh I have to go, I'll let you know if I find anything else out."

And that is all I got!! So running through my mind is...well it couldn't have hit our house right? We just moved into it, and there are miles and miles of base all around it. So it couldn't be that bad right?

Twenty minutes later I get another phone call.

B: "So our house may have been one of the ones hit."

C: "Okay. How did you find out?"

B: "The housing company just called to make sure we were still out of town."

C: "Well okay. I guess we'll have to wait til we can get more information."

So over the next day or so we kept searching the internet for information on where the base had actually been hit. At one point I saw something that said it had gone from SW to NE, and I knew one place that it had hit, so I drew a line on the map to see where it would have gone...right through our neighborhood. But I didn't really believe it, and it could have hit anywhere. So I didn't worry about it while I was at home.

When we drove onto base the next afternoon, I started videoing the destruction and all the trees down and everything. There were police blocking off the entrances to our street and as we drove up as close as we could I heard from the seat next to me "Isn't that our house? Or what used to be our house?"

And then when we finally got access to our street I had my camera out and was recording the houses as we past. "So there's the first house...gone. There's the second house....demolished. And there's the third, and that's ours, and its not bad." Then Brett says... "Um Courtney, the second house it ours." And the camera went straight back to that one. Demolished. 

Somethings we saw were amusing, like Brett's pants high up in the tree branches of the house next door. And they are still there. The one box that ended up with no damage happened to be the one that had our cleaning supplies. Woohoo :) And it was just a cardboard box! A couple of shirts were frozen to the wood floor and had to be pried up.

You know, I never even imagined our house ever being destroyed by a tornado. But we were very blessed. We hadn't unpacked much, and we don't have much with us. We had no furniture. Most of our stuff was in boxes. We lost some things, but we weren't there so we are fine. Clothing is probably one of the biggest losses. I thought my suitcase was lost...but we found it at the neighbors house slammed against the wall and torn, but everything was still in it. And the shed where the motorcycle was, was barely touched at all. 

Sometimes I wonder why things happen the way they do. But there are some things that we may never know in our lives. And that is okay, because if we put our whole trust in the Lord then we can know that all things will be for our good. We may wonder why...but He can make more of us than we could ever make of ourselves. He can guide us and warn us, but are we really listening when the Lord tries to warn and prompt us? How important it is that we are always ready and willing and able to receive those promptings, even little ones that don't make sense or seem to matter at that point in time. There is a bigger plan, larger than any one of us. But we are all a part of it. 

So we are back in a hotel for now. But they did find us another house yesterday, so once we get everything cleaned out of the rubble we'll start to move in there. But it has definitely been a fun experience. Crazy, but it's been fine. We were very blessed to not have much of anything in there. Other families had everything in their homes. So we were very blessed.

I took pictures. But I don't have a way to get them on the computer at the moment. They will come soon. You'll love them. 

Sorry that was a long story. But this is The End.