Thought that this was neat...

Day of Faith: Personal Quests for a Purpose - 3. Rachel Esplin from Harvard Hillel on Vimeo.

I love Christmas Breaks!

Sorry for taking a break. I really didn't want to have to do too much with the computer during the Christmas break....which by the way was wonderful! I could use a break like that every four months. It was a sad sad day today when I had to wake up before seven to get ready to go to work. But I also know that I am very lucky because I know there a lot of people who didnt' get to have such a long break without having to work at all for a week and a half.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that the Haines are still a live and sadly getting back to everday life. We'll post some pictures of Christmas and New Year's later. We hope you were able to enjoy the holidays!

Schoooool's......out.......for WINTER!

I figured that even though Alissa just wrote on here and today school got cancelled (LPS anyway), I've got time this morning so I can write a little something. Because of the bad ice storm last night I got a call at 6am this morning telling me that Lincoln public schools is closed so my last day as a mentor was officially yesterday. I don't know if I get paid for today but I hope so. The worse part about it was that I couldn't go back to sleep after the phone call. Poor Alissa, since it is the last day of finals week the university sent an email out that they weren't going to close so she had to go to work. So while Alissa continues to work until just before christmas, I'm beginning my three weeks off until I start my student teaching on January 12th. Then till May I'll be teaching the whole time without getting paid a cent for it. We'll be living off of sugar momma so in case I don't say it enough, Alissa I am very grateful for your working to support us! You do so much! Thank you! Hopefully it won't be too much longer and we can get to the point where you don't need to work.

So after Alissa found out I had the day off, I offered to make her waffles for breakfast but she said no, so while she was in the shower I decided I'd get to work scraping her car for her. It took me about a half an hour to get the inch thick ice off of the windows enough to see for driving. Then I drove her to work so that she didn't have to park and walk on the ice. Down below are pictures of my car still covered (on the right) and then Alissa's car Molly as a finished product from the scraping.

Last night was fun making cookies and decorating them. Doesn't everyone agree that the cookies on the left look better?! Come on, the blue buttons, green pants, and red hair?! Brilliant! I think the goatee provides more personality.

PS. I figured we better not leave out the picture I took of Alissa. Hope you love it.

Christmas Cookies

Victory and I are doing an advant calendar this year and hopefully the tradition will continue. Anyway, we didn't just put candy in the calendar but we occasionally put in activities. Yesterday's activity was to make cookies. So we made sugar cookies! After I saw Victory's first cookie that he made I was kinda of nervous for his taste in decorating cookies but he quickly improved and I think out did me. What do you think? Oh, by the way, his christmas tree has a go-tee. As well as his little man. Silly husband of mine. <3

It's beginning to look a lot like Christams....

I'm starting to feel like a slacker because I haven't posted for two weeks now. Victory and I are just hanging out and enjoying life. We hit the six month mark at the end of November. Yay for us! We appropriately celebrated by going to a friend's wedding reception where we remembered our special day.

I just have to make a special note, that last weekend we went roller skating. I love roller skating, I always have. There is nothing like gliding by with the wind in your hair. MMMmm I love it! And I love that I have a wonderful husband who is such a great sport about it. I had a past boyfriend who came with me but sat on the bench the whole time claiming to have weak ankles. Can we say "WHIMP"? (I guess that wasn't very nice...I'll give him credit of even coming with me.) However, that experience made truly appreciate having a husband who will enjoy this favorite pastime with me.

Here are some pictures of Victory and I's first Christmas Tree Shopping.

This is us in the car before we ventured out to the tree farm. I'm super excited. I love getting Christmas trees!

Me amongst all the lynched trees. We were to big of whimps to go out in the woods to cut down our own. So we bought a pre-cut tree.

Our tree fits in the trunk of my car! Oh Little tree, oh Little tree!

Note to self: Never string popcorn and cranberries ever again unless you've got plenty of helpers. We were stringing popocorn and craberries for what seemed like hours...oh wait it was hours and hours!

I'm excited for the Christmas season, I hope you are all enjoying the festivities of the season as well!

Wednesday's "I'm Thankful for..."

Well, since I can't guarantee that I'll be blogging tomorrow, I'm going to share with you one of things I have been and will always be most thankful for my family. (yes this may be sappy, but heartfelt.) :)

Can anyone ever adequately express what their family has done for them? Consider all of the love, time, energy and money that has been placed in just you. Think about their constant care for your well being and happiness and all of the time and energy that has been placed in your growth and development physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. They have given you traditions, theologies and even ideologies. Families are amazing things-no other organization, institution, or group of people could give you more.

So I just want to say I'm thankful for my family. I've known since I was a little girl that I was blessed to be part of this unique, loud, sometimes obnoxious and chaotic family. My parents spent a lot of time and energy teaching us the gospel and providing us with rich traditions. My parents truly gave of themselves to our family. I don't know that there is one of us kids that isn't entirely thankful for the family we were raised in. They provided us a safe haven from the world where we felt safe and loved.

I'm especially thankful for my family as Victory and I start thinking about the future. We have both been blessed by wonderful families that provided a wonderuful foundation that we can build our own future family on. Even though the idea of having children scares me to death, I love thinking about building a home for them to come to.

Tuesday's "I'm thankful for..."

I'm thankful for my job.

I know I often complain about having to get up and go to work. Sometimes it hard to make it through the work day sane but it pays the bills and provides excellent benefits. The hardest part of my job is staying busy and actually feeling like I've accomplished something when I close the door to my office. But the best part of my job is having responsibility of organizing meetings and making things happen. I feel like I've grown a lot since I've been here. My boss isn't the micro-manager that I expected to have. He very much lets me do my own thing and use my mind to figure things out and that is very empowering. I look forward to this summer and making some changes to one of our training meetings and getting things organized for the person who takes over my position in the future. It sounds like I plan on quitting, huh? Well, that plan isn't there yet but there are possibilities of moving somewhere for Victory's pursuit of his graduate career or maybe someday we'll start a family....if I could only convince myself that I could survive kids. :)

Two more days until Thanksgiving!!! Horray!