long time coming!

I've been soo busy since I got home from my extended trip to the family! I can't believe that it's already passed my birthday but it is. Jamie's only got 6 more weeks of AIT and then I get to keep him! I'm now 21 and I've been working on crafts for Girls Camp like there's no tomorrow. : )

Jamie and his brothers in front of the type of helicopter that his dad used to jump out of!

 Jamie in his platoon formation :) Not the best pics, but they'll have to do.

                                                                               

Jamie got to meet the  commanding Sgt over Fort Jackson and the man who was the Chief of Staff (I believe). He loved this!

Jamie and his Dad by the same helicopter. : )

For a Jamie Update....He's doing great. He passed his first AIT pt test with a 240. His run was the best out of everything. It's usually the worst out of everything so I'm really proud of how much he's accomplished. His Basic Training Graduation was a blast and he got Soldier of the Cycle for his company! He's definitely ready to come home to me, or at least have me with him : )

I got a new job at Fashion Bug!!! Yay, I'm super excited and I can't wait to start. It seems like I'm going to enjoy everyone. I'm definitely excited : ) All in all, we're doing pretty good!

Catching up again...

Man, I seem to be really bad at posting : ) Not like anyone else might be that way...lol. 

So, Jamie graduates from basic training on the 14th of April. He is doing super awesome and won the Best in Cycle award! : ))) I'm so proud of him that I could shout it from the mountain tops! All that he has left is Victory Forge, a 5 day excursion were the units are in a simulation of Afghanistan and they have to hold a fort. He told me a little about it and it's actually quite intense. I'll definitely be praying for him this week! : ) Only a week or so to go!

As far as my weight loss.... : /  It's not the best working plan when you're traveling for the month that you're supposed to be working on it. : ) lol. I'll be working on my crunches like crazy this next week. You think I'll get nice abs by then? lol : ) Probably not, but it's a start. 

Now for the really fun part! I'll be going to girls camp with my old ward in Florida! Yes, I'm so excited! I've got many ideas to make it super fun and hopefully something to inspire the girls : ). Really looking forward to it. 

Our life is looking up, I'm just glad that the Lord is pleased with what we're doing. Our married life so far has been a lot of waiting and struggles, as I'm sure many other couples could say the same. Right now things are starting to pan out. I'm so grateful for the many people who have helped us stay true and faithful. It's not always easy, but it definitely is worth it. I think the best advice I've received up to this point is to look for the Lord's hand in your everyday life. You'll be surprised at what you can find.   

Thanksgiving

We had an amazing time on our Thanksgiving Week. Jamie and I are very grateful for all of the family that we were able to see and for all of the awesome food that we ate while we were in Alabama. While we've been in Kentucky, I had completely forgotten how many women ware that Alabama print. You know the print I'm talking about, it's the slanted black and white checkers. Wow, if I wasn't an Auburn fan than I would have so much of that print, since I love black and white clothes. But anyways!

Over the Thanksgiving holidays we were able to visit all of our family down in Alabama!

 We spent a few days at both parent's house and got to see all of our friends close by. I even got some pretty neat pictures while we were driving. This is probably our favorite scenery. No wonder we miss it so much!

 Just in case you're curious, here's a little background of this lake I keep taking pictures of.

 It's called Lake Guntersville. This is a massive reservoir  that stretches over 76 miles and supplied by the Tennessee River. You don't see the lake very well from my parents house, instead you see the massive Tennessee River. In fact, the 3rd picture of water up there isn't a lake picture, it's the river. And there might not be humongous mountains there, but there are pretty good far off views of them. 

Here is the picture that we took with my side of the family. This is my little sister standing in front of us, and my brother-in-law and two of his kids in the front. I love those kids. They are some of the cutest ones that I know. 


Here's some pictures that I missed up there. ; )

 

Man oh Man!

So, it has been sometime since my last post and I apologize for you regular readers...Polly! But it has been one crazy ride ever since Jamie got his job at Lowes. He now has to wake up at 3am three days a week! Which also messes with the days in between due to the need to get enough sleep. Nevertheless, we've been having a splendid time looking forward to our trip to Alabama! We are extremely pumped to be going back home for Thanksgiving. I think the most common phrase in our house right now is, "Lets just make it to Thanksgiving." We will have the wonderful opportunity to be there for a whole week before we have to get back to Kentucky for work.

In the mean time though, this is whats been going on.

Halloween: Jamie as Facebook. He had a ton on fun with this costume because he'd walk around asking everybody to update their status. The people who got it, loved it. The people who didn't (most people) didn't really get it at all. He even put adds down the side of the pages. I love that man!

Halloween for me was a little different. I was Molly Mormon. Many people didn't get my costume because there were a lot of non-members, plus the fact that people here just hadn't heard of it. Go figure! I will say that the biggest hit I got out of my costume was with the missionaries. They loved it. 

Missionary: Right now I'm going to give a shout out to one of our missionaries that is over in Mt. Sterling. He is originally from Spanish Fork, UT. Anybody who knows Jamie's family and knows the background of where they came knows that his Grandfather picked up his family and moved to Alabama from Spanish Fork. There are still many a Jex back there in UT. In fact, the Jexes actually own half of the town. When we found out that this missionary was from there we went up to him and asked him if he knew any Jexes in Spanish Fork. He said, "Yeah I know the Jexes. They are a really big family out there!" He was really excited to find out that we are Jex too. And now he absolutely loves us. Which is a big change from some of the others that live here who've never heard of the name Jex.

Yeah, I think thats all of the really exciting stuff that's happened to us. Nothing really new. We've just been having a grand ol' time being us!

Banks

Jamie and I had been talking and we've decided that it's time that we picked a bank for here so that we could deposit money into it for our own safe keeping. In the hopes of finding a great new bank that we can use with both our names on it, we went out today "on the prowl", so to speak. We've been to a few of them in the area and I think that we've found one that fits us. 
I'm pretty sure that we're going to be going with Kentucky Bank. They've got some really neat stuff, like if we get charged a Foreign ATM Fee, we just have to bring the recipt back to them within 30 days and they will give us a refund. I also like that I can set it up so that if I accidentally overdraft for any reason, we can have them pull the money out of a savings account if available. I also like that we'll get new cards every year!It makes me super excited. I think that the only question that I forgot to ask him was what the cards look like and if I get any options as to what I want them to look like :)

All in all, I'm just glad that I can finally have a bank up here close by that allows me to deposit any money that I want out of my pockets! Plus, I feel somewhat productive!

Trips to come : ]

So I haven't really set my mind on what exactly it is that I want to post about. I just knew that I needed to make a new post.......


Now that I've thought about it, I think I'll post on my trip that I'm planning for Thanksgiving! Jamie and I even bought my plane ticket. I'm to fly from Louisville to Birmingham on Monday before the big Turkey Day! I'll be able to see all of our family again over about a week. I'm thinking that I'll probably end up going and celebrating the big day with upto 7 different parts of our family (potentially). Wow! I can't believe that we did almost that much for Chirstmas! lol : ]
After the big day has come and gone, I'll be going down to Florida with my sister for probably about a month or so. I'll probably end up staying with Megan and babysitting for her till Jamie gets off for Christmas. I won't be babysitting strait through that whole time, but I'll definitely get to let her and Randy get some time alone. With three kids, that can come a lot rarer than it used to.

Don't get me wrong, I'm so proud of the task that Jamie is doing for me and for us, but I will absolutely and whole-heartedly miss my hubby while he's away. That's why it's so good for me to have some fun and some wonderful people to distract me while I'm missing him.

Just can't wait for the holidays!

Institute

So, Jamie and I are big fans of the institute program that our church puts together, probably due to the fact that we originally met at institute ; ]   Naturally, we went to the first institute of the season for everyone in Morehead. I know what ya'll are thinking, "Why is this the first institute, don't they have it over the summer?" but sadly, we don't actually have a local institute over the summer. In order to go during the summer, we'd have to drive all the way into Lexington and that's just a little too far on our budget : /  Nevertheless, we did go last night. It was different from the classes that they usually have due to it being the first one. At this one we all read our favorite D&C scripture. Mine was rather hard to pick out because of all the many wonderfully inspirational scriptures that you can find in the Doctrine and Covenants : )  but I finally chose a verse that went along wonderfully with my favorite seminary scripture mastery. My scripture was D&C 10: 26 and 5 which says,

"26 And thus he flattereth them, and leadeth them along until he draggeth their souls down to hell; and thus he causeth them to catch themselves in thier own snare. 5  Pray always, that you may come off conqueror; yea, that you may conquer Satan, and that you may escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work." [emphasis added]

I decided on this one because a) it was my favorite scripture mastery, but b) because it also describes so vividly how the advisary works and how he uses our own shortcomings against us. It tells me how to avoid being caught in my own snares [by praying always], plus I've always loved the word conquer. To me it has a hero's conotation and suggests that not only will I simply win in my own battles against Satan, but that I will defeat him so mightily that I will be remembered and be called on as a hero in the eternities.

At this time I feel that I have to give a great big shout out to or beloved Brother Dyer who was our institute teacher back in Alabama. He is amazing! The best teacher that either one of us has ever had : ] We love him and think of him always as we continue to go the the class that he made dear to us in many ways. Thanks!

New Public Library

There's a new Public Library in our town :] We are super excited because it's much bigger and nicer. But I think that my favorite part about it is that the stairwells/doorways don't smell like you're going into a petting zoo ;]
Now that Morehead has this wicked awesome new place I think that it needs just a few more books and movies to fill it up :] At least it has the space now to expand it's horizon and content. All in all I think that the new library is quite the place. In fact, before we saw it, I didn't think that we'd be able to visit it as often as we used to (because its on the oposite side of town as us), but I think we might be able to manage it. lol.
It has many a wonderful sitting areas and little nooks to get on you're computer. Many nice new tables and super tall book shelves to place any book. And a wonderfully, super cute new childrens section, aquiped with a sink to do awesome little science experiments and art projects! It's all super exciting, and I don't know about Jamie, but this library makes me extra excited to bring our children into a place that has a wonderful resource like this. :]

Combined

So one wednesday every month the Young Men and the Young Women of our church get together and do an activity. Ours got together today, and I'm sorry to say that I didn't get Jamie there in time for the start of it. : (  But on the good side it wasn't his month to have the activity planned. I'm not exactly sure what they were doing tonight, but I hope they had fun!

Anyways, why he was late was due to the fact that we'd gone into town and done some shopping. When we got home, it was early enough, but I didn't keep track of the time and I ended up having dinner take too long. : /    Atleast I can say that it was a fun dinner....sushi! Yep, that's right, Jamie and I had sushi tonight and it was a good experience. : ]  But for the sake of my tummy, I think I'm going to let him eat all the sushi from now on : ]

new stuff

With me redoing all of the blog, I figured that I needed to make a new signature for my posts that would work better with the blog.....I can't see it right now, but I hope that ya'll can. : ]  I hope that it works.

PICTURES! again......

So, I got up with one of the sisters in our ward at church, because she is a photography fanatic like me, and she has allowed me to tweak some of her photos. As many of you know, I love to ShaZam my photos, so of course I have done this to some of hers......

Let me know what you think! It was super fun and I hope that we have many more pictures later to share with everyone. I definitely hope that we are able to get up with each other in the future to swap tricks and editing techniques!

Also, I love tute blogs and if it has anything to do with photos then I'm there. So if you know any cool blogs that do that, then just leave me a comment and I'll be sure to check them out! : )

This picture with all four of them I did a couple different ways. I did it in B&W, this way, and in full color. I just liked this one. : ]

Blogs!

I must say that I absolutely love tutorial blogs! Yesterday in my down time I was skimming through all the blogs that my sister follows and I came across a wicked awesome blog that tells you how to turn old cribs into benches! I LOVE it! I even have a crib that I might need to do something with so it was perfect! Here is the blog

Baby Names and OUR Baby

Jamie and I have picked out some baby names for our children. It all started on our trip back from our honeymoon. Believe me you get kind of bored after 6 hours in a car. But if we have a girl then we'll be naming her Hazel Adele Jex. If we have a boy it'll be Blaine Isaac Jex. I like them and they're fun names.

Today we took our baby, Tabby cat, to the park to play. I don't think that she expected it to be so hot and muggy because she kept panting like a dog. It was actually pretty cute.

PICTURES!

I will admit that I'm a lot of a picture addict, as my husband will readily inform you, but I've gotten a little tired of the pictures that I've taken. It would be alright if I were to take more pictures, but I can't find my camera charger. So in the efforts to fulfill my addiction I've stolen pictures off of facebook and have just tweaked them.  Here are a lot for your enjoyment. :)

The one with the baby is Megan and Shiloh Curtis for the few readers who might not know this.


The rest are of Lucinda. She was my best friend in the 8th grade and I probably should have asked if I could post them, but I don't think that she'll mind. I say was because after my 8th grade year I moved away from her and to that great state Florida.

Tell me what you think!

Sugar Doodle

So I just wanted to thank my sister Megan for being such an awesome sister! I was just reading her blog a few minutes ago and discovered the awesome giveaway of a Silhouette! It's a wicked awesome machine that can help you do....oh, practically everything! And it occured to me as I was reading about this giveaway that this machine would be spankin' awesome for the primary room that we have at our church! I would love to work with this machine and the Primary Presidency to make that room all that more awesome. Man, I love being a primary worker.
Anyways, if you'd like to check out the giveaway, here is the link sugar doodle giveaway!

A little of this and a little of that

Trying to loose weight when you don't have too many people who can do it with you is somewhat useless. But I think that I've discovered how it'll work for me. Over the last few days I've been thinking about how much I loved to go to the youth dances when I was younger. I happened to be listening to the radio with our cat Tabby and I had an epiphany. What if I made my own dances just listening to the radio! It's been tons of fun and already Jamie has made the comment that I look like I've lost weight. I really don't do too much, just a little and it really has helped me so far. All I do is turn on the radio in our spare bedroom (my art room that has an open floor), and listen to the music. I usually end up doing one of the many line dances that I've done hundreds of time at church dances! The super cute thing is that while I dance like a teenager by myself, Tabby just sits on my sewing chair and watches me. I have a blast! And apparently it helps me get a little healthier. It definitely makes me want to do other things like clean the bathrooms or do all the mirrors. I love it. The energy that I've had is a nice change of pace.

I'm actually looking forward to the new school year beginning. With it will hopefully bring many new faces with it to church. I'm excited to meet many new people and hopefully make a ton of new friends. It'll also be nice to see an old friend or two. I'm also looking forward to all the new classes that will be starting up on campus. I'm thoroughly glad to have the new kind of hubbub. Plus, I might as well make the most of the time that I have with Jamie! It's coming up on my favorite time of year. I've always liked the fall. I'm just glad that I get to spend most of the fall with my husband before he goes to Basic and AIT training. I'm definitely excited to see all of the fun things planned for fall in this area. I just hope it meets my expectations.

Jamie had a job interview this week and it went really well. Tonight he goes in to meet with the shift manager and have his follow up interview. I'm really proud of him and all that he does for not only me and our family, but also for the boys that he has in his boyscout troop. He is the best man that I know and I am so lucky to be his wife!

Wish us luck on all of our endeavors and we hope that your's are blessed as well! :)

Everyday trifles...

The public library seems like our second home. If we aren't at our house, chances are that we went to the library.
For obvious reasons we have been at the library everyday for the past 3 or 4 days now. We pick out new movies, books (for me), and play on the internet. Its just extra nice that it has air conditioning.

Jamie goes on his first drill with the Guard this weekend and he is super nervous. I keep telling him that he'll be fabulous, but he still is worried. I think he's mostly worried because until this morning he had no knowledge of what was going to happen. I know that he'll be great, but if you'll just keep him in your prayers, I'm sure that he wouldn't mind. : ]

Other than that, there's not much thats new.

Primary

As I have mentioned before, I am now a Primary assistant. I get to do pretty much anything that will help them to run more smoothly. Sunday was the first chance that I had to be able to teach a lesson on the spot as well as help with a part of the singing time. And the awesome part is that I get to do a review game this Sunday for singing time!

On the slightly funny side of primary yesterday, Jamie's dad and brother were visiting this weekend. That's not the funny part, the funniness was from the fact that he wanted a picture of us all before they left. So, in order to get this picture with me, they came into my class and had one of the missionaries take the picture in the middle of my class consisting of three 11-year-old girls. It was cute and priceless, they came in and surrounded me in my chair and took the picture and left. On the way out Jamie kissed me and then shut the door. After that experience the girls eyes were about as wide as a quarter! It was so funny!

We were also able to go to the Temple in Louisville on Friday! It was a ton of fun and we were able to meet a few people who are our new good friends! We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and will look for any opportunity to go to the temple! : ) While we were in the temple I thought of another name for kids, Hazel. For those of you who don't know, Jamie and I have been coming up with baby names in our bored and spare time. When I proposed the name Hazel, Jamie told me that it was his Dad's mother's name. I thought that it was only fitting and I want this name, but I haven't found anything that I really like to go with it, other than Jex. I was really hoping to be able to find a name from my family history to go with it. I guess that within the next week or so I'll be going through all of my mom's records for one. I'm in hot pursuit, but it's not like I don't really have plenty of time for that one. : )

The Living Force

I always thought that my living force was my faith and hope firmly rooted with my Heavenly Father. Or maybe even the never wavering devotion for my ever-loving husband. However, when we were left without internet this week or so, we quickly discovered that it is in fact the internet that keeps us mostly sane. So on our conquest for sanity we have rooted our bodies firmly at a table of our public library. Yahoo for free internet!!!!

So besides not having internet, Jamie have had a somewhat exciting week. At church this past Sunday, we received our first callings in KY. Jamie is the 2nd counselor in the YM presidency, and therefore the Scout Master, and I am a Primary Assistant. We are both so excited for our callings that we can't wait for Sunday.

Also, I feel super accomplished with the fact that we cleaned the house this week, and I have done a wonderful job of keeping it clean! Which is an accomplishment, due to the fact that I get tired of doing the dishes all the time. It looks nice and I love it because we can definitely feel the Spirit constantly in our home now!

We got our car fixed the best that it can be for now, and found out that we need to probably start looking for a car. We did look at some for fun yesterday and we found one that we like a lot for $3,000. We'll see about it though.

For the most part, we're having fun and going a long great. I even get to try some new dishes this week and we just couldn't be happier :]

Ta-ta for now,

Organized!

In the hopes of making my computer faster, I've been reviewing some of the programs that I have on my computer. Who'd of thought that the very first program that I click on would be an organizing program. : ]  It's so super cool that I've been on it for almost all of my free time today and yesterday trying to organize and budget myself, and thus my family. From this one place I can open up my money managing program as well as this program that you can take notes in! Its called Microsoft Office OneNote and it works like an electronic notebook. It's so much fun! I can even take snap-shots of the pages that I'm looking at online and paste them directly into the text. If I was a business woman, I could mesh the projects I was working on in Excel and Word with this OneNote to make it all easier to find. I LOVE it!!! I feel like such an accomplished woman. If I had had this program while I was the Relief Society Secretary, they would have loved me to death! It would've made it a lot harder to find my replacement. : ]
But anyways, it definitely makes me feel like I'm ready for any calling that comes my way!