a day of gratitude

it's november 13th already, so i guess it's about time i do some "official" posts about what i am so grateful for in my life right now. on monday i detailed my gratitude for our country's veterans through my late grandpa shoaf and everything that surrounded his passing back in february. i am beyond glad i recorded all those memories to never forget. 

yesterday wasn't a typical day. you see, farm boy, flew out of the salt lake airport for a job interview that morning and flew back in that afternoon, so i took the chance i had to hang out in a different valley for the day. 

my very first stop was a quick breakfast of my favorite french toast at kneaders. oh so good! and then i made the short drive down the road to this beautiful place in jordan. 

it was my first time doing a temple session alone. i was a little nervous at first and hesitated to commit going since i've been sick the past few days, but man oh man i am so glad i went. being in the temple gives me such an amazing feeling. i feel loved, important, known, and that i am doing great work for the Lord! i have missed that feeling so much, and being in the temple reminded me i need to go more often. and that got me to thinking. here in logan, utah i live literally less than five miles from the temple. while i was in salt lake valley yesterday i could have drove to over four different temples in 30 minutes. and it hit me, i am incredibly blessed here in this region of the country! temples surround me everywhere. i have the opportunity to go to work eat dinner, and go to a temple session and still be home at a decent time for bed. growing up in indiana, a temple trip is almost an all day trip since our closest temple is in louisville kentucky. soon to be indianapolis once it is all finished in a couple years, which will make a temple trip much easier.

i am beyond grateful for temples. and the availability i have to attend them whenever i desire.

and before i sign off this here blog today, i have one more thing (or person, really) that i was reminded i am beyond grateful for in my life. farm boy has been working so so hard these past couple months. and not just in school, and work, but with our future after he graduates. he has put countless hours into researching companies, perfecting his resume, applying, practicing for interviews and so on. i don't know how i could ever do everything he has done. i know he gets so nervous over it all, and feels a lot of pressure, but he has done amazing things these past few weeks, and we're not even done with it all yet. i can't say much about all the details here and now, but i can say no matter what direction we end up going i have the brightest future ahead of me with this hard working farm boy.  

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!