our weekend adventures

so even though i should be coding surveys for work and there are a billion things on my to-do list, i have been itching to put another blog post up. i have a million and one things floating through my head lately that i hope to put into somewhat of eloquent wording and express here on the blog, but until then i'll put a few measly pictures from our weekend adventures up here and dream for more meaningful posts another day.

friday night was a low key night for us since i was babysitting for a few hours, but once i got home we headed out for to pick up a movie and some ice cream. well, we came home with ice cream, but no movie. i don't know if it's just us or if the movie selection really is poor lately, but every few weeks we get the urge to rent a movie, but never find one worth watching. all is well though, we fill our time with seasons of duck dynasty and pretty much any show on the food network. 

and cody probably won't appreciate this, but we have been watching more and more of the national geographic wild channel. it all began when i got hooked on a show about wildebeest late one night while he was trying to sleep for work early the next morning. he gave me such a hard time the next few days for watching a show about the wildebeest migration (and i didn't make it any easier on myself when i would tell him a million interesting yet useless facts that i had learned from the show). to both our astonishment though, he started watching it with me, and enjoyed it! so now we are a nat geo wild channel loving family!

that was quite the tangent, but back to our weekend festivities. saturday morning i babysat again for a few hours and then we were off for a full day of events. first stop was for an amazing session at the lds temple in logan. i love love love to go to the temple with my husband, and it was our first time back since we've returned to logan. i'm so grateful we have a temple just minutes away from our home that we can attend whenever we want (and if you're unfamiliar with lds temples, just check out this website).

once we were out of the temple, we headed south to check out the wizard of oz movie in 3-d and digitally remastered. (we made a quick krispie kreme stop along the way though of course. who could pass up a krispie kreme donut!)

oh man was it good! i remember watching the wizard of oz as a child and thinking it was so scary with the witches and flying monkeys. and now it has been 75 years since it was first released, and still such a classic that we both really enjoyed. if only they still made such classic movies like the wizard of oz.

we headed south again after the movie and got a quick dinner at the red iguana in salt lake city, since it is such good mexican food! they even had two fellas playing and singing spanish music to the guests which was the best kind of entertainment in a mexican restaurant. i know cody enjoyed it, probably more than anyone else there.

and no weekend is complete without a great church experience, and time to relax with friends and family (and great tasting, but not-so-good for you food). being newlyweds, on a college budget, in the middle of logan we don't always get to enjoy friends and family, but with cody's family only 30 minutes away we've been able to more and more, especially on sundays. and this past sunday we were able to make the short trip north to see cody's little brother, collin, receive his eagle, and eat some sweet homemade treats from his mother as well.

it's already friday again, and i can't wait to see what this weekend brings us, especially since i know saturday night ill be listening to some amazing women  and men speak at the relief society broadcast. listen or watch online here!

Just two more hours and one last final...

Just two more hours of work and one last final tomorrow. That's all I have left of this semester. And as I sit here in front of this computer for the last two hours of work my mind keeps going to the summer that lies ahead of me. And the many opportunities that it holds.

I get to spend three months back in my old stomping grounds, work with the 4-H program that I lived for each and every summer, and spend time with all of amazing family and friends that I rarely ever get to see throughout the year. The possibilities are unlimited, and I don't want to waste them! This has led me to the decision of making a "Summer Bucket List" that will include everything and anything that I want to do while I'm back home this summer. I have a lot of different ideas roaming around in my head, but I need to get them down on paper and make them official. 

So get excited for the official "Summer Bucket List" coming soon, and hopefully everyone back home is gearing up for my return because in just one week I will be making the long long long drive from Logan, Utah to Hope, Indiana. Ahhh...I'm SO excited!

A Summer back home in Indiana...

So if you haven't heard yet I am returning back home to Indiana for the summer!!!

Ever since I moved out to Utah for school I have wanted to go back home for a summer, however it was just never able to happen...until now. I will be working full time for the Bartholomew County Extension Office as the Summer 4-H Intern.

Growing up at home I lived for the County Fair every summer. I showed our Jersey dairy cows, sheep, swine, and of course competed with my horse and pony in the contesting events. Besides livestock, I did sewing projects, gift wrapping, and microwave foods. I can't wait to spend my entire summer working with the program that made every one of my summers amazing. I'm looking forward to working with all the young 4-Hers and putting together a great 4-H camp and 4-H week at the fairgrounds.

Besides working my dream job, I will be able to see all of my family and friends for more than just a few weeks at a time. I can hang with my incredible little nephews and twin nieces for the entire summer. Spend time with my little sisters that are living back home in a huge house with my parents. And help my dad farm and care for the cows and pigs during a great Indiana summer. I am so excited and anxious for it all to start, however leaving Cody (my cow crazy farm boyfriend) will be hard. He is pretty darn lucky though with a full time job working on his family dairy farm in Preston, Idaho. I'm going to miss him like crazy.

I don't think I could put into words how much I love home back in Hope, Indiana. I love the great summers full of the fair, corn and beans everywhere, driving around in a truck with the windows down, and hanging with my friends and family.

I hope everyone's ready for me to return, because I sure am!

Grandpa Moore...always in my heart.

My blogging is starting off very slow. It has been a long two weeks since I first posted though.

After submitting my first post, my day kind of turned upside down. 

My dad called me from back home in Indiana and informed me that my Grandpa Moore was in the hospital and that they had told everyone to come in and see him. It wasn't looking good. My heart instantly dropped, but then again I didn't feel too harshly because he has been in and out of the hospital for the past year or so and always came out of it strong. An hour later though my dad gave me word that my grandpa had passed away. I was instantly shocked, and then instantly crying. 

I couldn't believe that he was gone. The man that taught me how to hook a worm, water ski, catch dinner and then fry it up was gone. Every summer I worked right along side him in his Touchdown Lures company that produced fishing lures. The Indianapolis Star wrote a great article on the legend that he built called: Jonesville man's 'Touchdown' lure responsible for many big scores.

We would work all day long and then my sisters and cousins and I would run over to Taco Bell for lunch or if it was really hot we stopped by Tropical Sno for a snow cone. I remember putting hot dogs on the fishing poles early each morning, and then once we got back from working we would check to see if any catfish had been hooked. I lived out on the lake every summer, along with my sisters and cousins. The best part was when we would all stay in the basement for a week long. It would be full of skiing, fishing, campfires, s'mores, and tons of fried fish that we caught ourselves, of course.

Out of all the memories though, the one thing I always remember about my grandpa is that there was never a time he didn't tell us he loved us, or was proud of us. Both my grandpa and grandma were the best grandparents I could ask for. After anything and everything that happened they would tell us how much they loved me and all my family. And how proud of me they were. They always made it to my basketball games, my high school graduation, the county fair, and much more. That is what I'm going to miss the most. Just seeing his smiling face that told me how much he loved me.

Grandpa Moore will always be in my heart. I can't wait for the days that I can tell my children about him. I want them to know how amazing he was. And how much he would love them, because I know that he loves me and always will. 

I'm actually doing this...

I have thought about this day for so long (the day I actually start a blog), but never seemed to have the courage or time, which I still feel like I don't, but I'm doing it anyway.

Most blogs have a main focus or theme behind them such as cooking, sewing, traveling, etc. Well, this is one reason I never had the courage to start a blog, because I have no idea what my focus would be. I entertained the idea of a cooking slash baking blog, but not sure how well I can keep up on that with going to school and working and spending time with my boyfriend and friends. And then I thought about sewing. My amazing mother recently gave me a sewing machine for my 21st birthday in February, but I'm no pro. The best way I can put it is that I have experience sewing, but I'm not an experienced sewer.

So with no definite consensus on a "theme", I decided I would make it a jumble of it all. And with that decision came the next dilemma of deciding on a blog name. With no concrete "theme" of my blog it needed to be something generic for my entire life right now and everything and anything I could be going through that could end up on the fancy new blog of mine. Now you're all probably looking back up at the title and wondering what I was thinking when I chose this. Well, you have to understand my childhood and my father in particular...

I grew up in a little country town of just over two thousand people in southern Indiana. Hope was it's name and "A Surprising Little Town" was our slogan. I lived on a farm just a few miles from the town square on a country road with my family of nine. Our farm (aerial picture below!) includes a herd of Jersey dairy cows (the best dairy cow breed in my opinion), POA ponies, a hog barn full of 4,000 baby pigs and of course chickens, dogs, and cats. My father farms just over 500 acres that include mainly corn and soybeans, as well as alfalfa hay for the animals.

My dad grew up on his parents farm just down the road from ours a few miles. His entire childhood consisted of farm work from sunrise to sunset (unless they were hiding from grandpa in the tree house they built). Milking cows, chopping wood, feeding animals and helping his dad with construction business were just a few things my dad and his 10 brothers did everyday, while his two sisters and mother were cooking and taking care of the home. This type of work ethic has been with my dad his whole life. And has been brought about some motivating sayings to stir the work on. "Pushin' the Pony" was just one of them, and probably the everyone's favorite. "Walk the Dog" and "Drop the Blade" were both other common sayings my dad would tell all us kids to get us working each day. Of course, it got quite a few laughs too, but we all grew up working hard out on the farm and in the house.

So as I thought about what to title this blog, I thought about how I'm so busy everyday just trying to do get things accomplished and be productive. My dad's familiar voice yelling "Pushin' the Pony" came to my mind, and that was it. This blog of mine will include all the craziness of my life that I'm trying to get accomplished. I'm not really sure what I'm doing, but I hope you enjoy!