Things have continued to be pretty busy over the past few weeks. We had a great Thanksgiving with both Kristen’s and my family at our house. We ended up having a couple standard foods missing in action so we have purchased another turkey and will be planning a second meal soon, maybe for Christmas. It is hard to believe that this year is pretty much over. I don’t feel like I got a whole lot done, but when I think about it I really have. We still have a lot of work left to do on our house, most of it is pure muscle work and requires a lot of time (taking down wall paper and painting).

Time to earn some brownie points!

This year has been a good year for my relationship with Kristen. I feel like with the purchase of the house and finishing school that we are settling down more. Ever since we were married we have had a great relationship and pretty much never got mad at each other. So many people would say; ohh, its because you’ve only been married a year. But a year past and they said, well its because you’ve only been married two years; three years; four years… I know that 90% of why we do so well is because of Kristen. The more time I spend with her the more I realize how perfect she really is for me. While our married years are still early, we have actually known/dated for close to 10 years. It will be easy to spend the eternities with her. I just hope they don’t make crunchy food in heaven I would attribute the strength of our relationship to having the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives, and as a part of that, both of us having served missions to share the Gospel. It helps us to have open communication and similar goals.

Along with all the posts of what Kristen is grateful for, I would have to say that I am grateful for my relationship with her.

For the first time in a very long time (close to a year) I was able to spend some time working on the new version of recipetodish.com. Last year was a really good year for it but there were a lot of changes as well that I had wanted to make that would be addressed in the next version. With finishing school, starting a new job and my new calling in church, I have been so busy that I have not had time to work on it. I had a co-worker join the website yesterday which gave me some long needed encouragement to start working on it again. I was able to put in a good 2 and half hours of work into it, and probably have somewhere another 100 to go before it is totally finished but it was good to get some things done on it.

There have been a lot of other little projects that I have been working on that seem to keep me constantly busy. Hopefully over the next month or two I can start to knock out some of the smaller easier to finish projects and free up some more of my time.

Last week I was able to go to the dentist as well… first time in close to 7 years due to a lack of health insurance and was happy/relieved to find out that I really did not have any cavities or other complications. They did have to do a lot of cleaning below the gum line which was not fun at all and left my whole mouth pretty sore for a couple days.

Over the weekend we had a meeting for all the leadership in the branch at 7am. Since it was so early I decided to invite everyone over to our house for breakfast. It turned out to be a really great time and I think was really good to spend some time with the leaders as well as discuss some of the challenges that we have in the branch. While my calling has been a lot of work, it has really been a great experience and I enjoy working with everyone in the branch. I do have to say, we had to cancel services on sunday due to a gas leak at the building and it was one of the most relaxing days I have had in such a long time.

Along side Kristen’s post the other day about her blessing and trying to have a renewed resolve to begin keeping a journal with whats going on in her life, I decided to try and do the same.

A few of the crazy changes that have happened recently… as the title of this post suggests, I started a new job and at about the same time also a new calling in church. A little before both of those, I also finished my BS degree at WSU. Currently I am working at TimeIPS, and it has been going very well. Lifeboat was a great experience for me and I was able to learn a lot while there, and that learning has continued on with my new job. The work environment has been a lot of fun, everyone is pretty code savvy which makes for a very creative workplace where I can discuss ideas pretty openly and have people who can critique and add to those ideas.

Toward the begging of the year I was called as the second councilor in a spanish branch. That was an exciting calling but was short lived as the whole presidency was released when the branch president got a job in Texas. My new calling has been even more exciting as I was called to be the new President. Although I have learned a lot at work, it is dwarfed by all I have had to learn with this new calling. Overall I do feel that the Lord has helped me get through some of the learning curve and continues to help me as long as I keep working.

I am glad that school is out, though I am thinking of going back for a masters degree. I was going to start this past semester but with the new job, calling, house and all the other little things on my plate, I decided to put it off for a semester… I hope only one.

That is pretty much the update of major events of this year.