It's Christmas, It's Christmas!

Well, its not Christmas anymore.. but we are keeping our Christmas tree up since we don't have anything to put in its spot just yet. So.. its still Christmas at the Anderson home for us :)

Jayson and I both had to work on Christmas Eve, so we were a little disappointed that we couldn't go back home to California.. but we still had a great holiday none the less! We played some of our video games that Jayson's brother, Cody, had sent up to us. The next day we went up to Jayson's sister Brittny's house and finished off Christmas with them. Their youngest son, Daniel-7 months old, was fast asleep when we got there so we couldn't play very much :/ Their oldest son, Sam-2 years old, was being his normal, wild and crazy toddler self. He's a bundle of fun and loved the gift we got him! It was a Buzz Lightyear handheld keyboard learning game.

Christmas this year was a little weird for me though.. I woke up on Christmas Eve thinking about what outfit to wear to my gandmother's (I call her Farmor: it means Father's Mother) Danish food-dinner, only to realize that I currently live 800 miles away and wasn't going to be attending that dinner. On Christmas morning, I was folding laundry and remembered how last year I wore my Zebra pajama pants to my aunt Tara's for breakfast and presents. Like I said, even though my first Christmas with the greatest gift Heavenly Father has given me was more than amazing, I still wish we were able to make it home for Christmas!

Sad Story Time: Well, not super sad..but still...
A few weeks ago I broke the band on my ring :/ I have no idea how I did it or when it happened, but it happened. So Jayson and I started looking online for a new ring for me. I found this BEAUTIFUL, braided band ring that I fell in love with, so we ordered it online. When it arrived I was so excited to put it on....until I saw the fake 5 carat rock sitting on my finger and Jayson and I were speachless... We knew it was a fake (well, chemically generated) diamond, but we weren't expecting it to be that big and look the way it did. Anyway, we sent it back. So I had no ring for a few days :(

On Christmas morning, I opened my package from the Disney store that Jayson had gotten me and inside I found a silver, twisted ring with the letter 'A' on one end and mickey mouse ears on the other. It was just supposed to be a ring to wear till we found one I really liked, but I love this one way more than any other ring I've found. Its cute, simple, has our monogram on it, and of course, DISNEY! I think I'm gonna stick to this thing till we get Sealed.

So that's our Christmas! Sorry for not having pictures.. I'll have to get better and taking some...

But here is one other present I got from Jayson: Mickey Mouse reusable ice cubes, and a 'Wedding Day' snow globe that's also a jewelry box!

The month of December

Okay, Okay, we will get better at posting more and not just waiting for a holiday to write and update.. I promise!

Well, what has December with the Anderson's been like? Lets see.... pretty ridiculously boring. I work every day from 10:30am-9:00pm and Jayson works all day as well (his hours vary depending on the day) so we don't get the chance to go out and do anything really. When we get off work, we usually just come home, throw in a TV dinner and watch a movie till we fall asleep, then do the same thing all over again the next day. Did you say TV dinners? Yes, yes I did. Why are you eating TV dinners? Well, its not that we can't afford 'real' dinners, we are just so sick of food. Not in the 'I have an eating disorder' kind of way.. we just literally are sick of food. With both of us working in restaurants all day, neither of us wanna come home and see more of it. Jayson is still going through his management training, so he has to be trained for all of the positions at work, including the cooking and prepping. I am an 'expedite' so I take the food out of the window, tray it up for the servers, and then run it out to the tables. Trust me, out of starting at food for 90% of your day, you easily get tired of seeing it and definitely are not in the mood to eat any of it.

Jayson's work has been going well. Like I said, he's still doing management training, but he is finished with the cooking/prepping food part of it. Poor guy has cuts and burns on his fingers and arms :( Not bad ones.. just wittle ones... he's okay :) They finally gave him a store location too! We're not too excited about it.. but he'll be working at the store inside the Salt Lake City airport when it opens in March. Its only a 15 minute drive from where we live, but there is one two minutes away from us that we were hoping for. That's okay though, things will work out!!

My job? Pain in the butt!! But I definitely prefer it over being a server.. they only make $2 something an hour and I make $8.00 plus tips. So its a good source of income, but it gets annoying.. As you can tell, I am SICK beyond sick of food.. I'm gonna be looking for a new job soonish..

Weather? I AM SO ANNOYED!

No..there is NO SNOW! -_-

none. zero. zip. nada. silch. no me gusta. no bueno!

I was expecting a WHITE Christmas! W-H-I-T-E!!

Its just cold.. 27-37 degrees all week. Any time it does snow, its melted by morning...

Well, its 10:30pm on Christmas Eve, and I'm gonna go spend it with my husband. Sorry for the horrid update...but it is what it is :) We've got some fun things planned for tomorrow so I'll update you on that stuff later!

Merry Christmas!!

Love, The Andersons

New Life Adventures- The past month

Hello all and Happy Thanksgiving from the Anderson's! We apologize for not having updated anything this past month.. adjusting to a new home, in a new state, with new everything has been a lot crazier than expected... So allow me to fill you in:

Jayson and I finally made it to Salt Lake City, Utah in our first apartment. We owe a few big thank yous to Jayson's parents, Kerry and Curtis. First off, Jayson and I moved out our place we were renting in California a few days earlier than originally planned so we could save money. However, our apartment in Utah wasn't available for us at the time that we had wanted to move. We ended up staying at Jayson's parents, which was nice because we got the chance to spend some time together as a family before we moved. We stayed there for 3-4 days before Jayson's dad not only helped us tie down our mattress to the top of our U-haul (which is a long story in itself) but he helped with the move too!

So you're probably wondering about why the mattress was 'a long story.' First of all, Jayson didn't get off work the night before our move (which was Halloween night) till 11:30pm and that's when we finished packing the U-haul and tying down the mattress. It took us about two hours to tie it down because the Santa Ana winds had started up. Talk about bad timing...

The winds didn't help with the driving either. We left the house at about 5:00am and I fell asleep the moment we got onto the freeway. I woke up a few times to Jayson and Curtis getting out of the car to adjust the mattress because the wind kept blowing it almost off the U-haul. The third time I woke up, we were parked outside his parents house and they were taking the mattress off. The winds had just become too rough for us to even try to complete our 14 hour drive. (Jayson and Curtis came to that conclusion after having been out on the road for over two hours, only having driven about 15 miles, and had to adjust the mattress twice). So yes, we did not have a mattress for the first couple of days but we did have a memory foam mattress topper to deal with until we found a replacement mattress.

We finally pulled into our apartment at about 11:00pm. And that's when our new adventure began :)

(By the way, we apologize for not having any pictures or videos available at the moment to put up- there will be some soon!)

Our "Neighbors"

Jayson and I had bought a University of Utah door mat on one of our trips to Bed Bath and Beyond and apparently we weren't the only ones who fell in love with it. After having put it outside our door, we found that our neighbors loved it as well. I came home from work one night to find that our mat was sitting outside our neighbors door and their mat was sitting outside ours, so I switched them back. The next morning, our neighbor had switched our mats again! So again, I politely switched them back.. A few days after that, they had taken it yet again, which I will admit had made me a little more than upset, so I threw their mat at their door...

"Work, work, work"
Jayson and I were supposed to start work basically the moment we had moved, but that didn't work out so well..

Jayson did get his job as Assistant Manager for Cafe Rio and I did end up getting the job with Red Robin, as well as a promotion as a Host and an Expo (which is the person that bring our the food to the tables). Jayson and I both struggled to get a hold of our managers and recruiters who were in charge of our training schedules. We had done everything and more to get a hold of them, but they had a hard time communicating with their managers and supervisors, which made it that much more difficult for them to get in contact with us about our start dates. Its a much longer and complicated story on both ends, but that's the gist of the situation..

Life in Utah
I know I complained a lot about the cold, but its really not that bad. The first night we slept in our apartment, Jayson and I were tossing and turning for a few moments. I was thinking about the drive up here and thinking about just how long 14 hours are..and exactly how far away we were..and I got real homesick real quick.. and I will admit, I was scared that things up here with work weren't gonna work out. But we put our faith in the Lord and in each other and knew in our hearts that we were doing the right thing and that we were going to get through this with the help of the Lord and each other.

It has now been about 3-4 weeks since we moved and we couldn't be happier. We have loved the experiences at work and the opportunities that have been available to us. I personally love the chances we have had to see Jayson's two oldest sisters and their husbands and sons. We didn't really get the chance to see them that much in California so its nice that they live close.

Being together <3
I love being with my husband :) Jayson does leave for work at about 6:45-7:00am every morning, so I am usually asleep when he leaves for work, and then I start at 11:30 and usually don't get off work till 8:00pm, so we don't see each other till after 8:00pm. But that's not nearly as bad as it was back in California when he was working at the hotel; he wouldn't get off work till 11:30pm or 7:00am if he was working overnight shifts.

We spend time together cuddling, telling each other about our work days, and then usually finish the night off by an epic Pokemon battle on our Nintendo 64 (and I usually win too :P).

With today being Thanksgiving, Jayson and I are at his grandparents house with his extended family. There are a few people I have not yet had the chance to meet, but I am very grateful to have met everyone and I look forward to the opportunities to meet the rest of his family.

All in all, we love Utah. We miss California, but we know that moving here to start our lives together was worth it and will continue to be!

8 Days left in California

I am very, very excited about our move to Salt Lake City! I can't even begin to tell you the number of conversations Jayson has tried to have with me about convincing me to move to Utah after we got married when we were dating. My answer was always "Uhm, we live in California..where its warm.. we're not going anywhere!" And I'm surprised to say that I've been counting down the days for the past month for our move.

There are a few things that I am no so excited for. The cold weather is one thing. Here I am, sleeping in 55-60+ degree weather and I'm 'cold' but I don't even know the meaning of cold until we move... Jayson looked up the weather for the day/night we move and the high will be 50-60 degrees and the low is about 30 something degrees. I'm really excited...

I'm not too thrilled about learning new cities, directions, and street addresses. Jayson says its darn near impossible to get lost on a grid system, but I still can't figure anything out because of these street numbers, even though they're all numerical.

I'm the worst at adjusting to changes, but I know I'll feel comfortable eventually. However, I am excited that we have our own place that we don't have to share with anyone. It's our first apartment that we get to decorate how ever we want without anyone telling us what we can or cannot do. We get to make it our own 'Anderson' home :)

I'm also extremely excited to be moving closer to some of my girlfriends in the area. Out here in California, 99% of my friends from high school have moved out of the area for college and we have lost contact. Most of my friends from church are still attending the Singles Ward, which is awesome for them, but because every one has a crazy schedule, Sundays were the only days we could really catch up and see each other. Jayson and I are excited to be moving into an area where there will be other young married couples, as well as two of our closest friends who are going to be getting married in April. Jayson also has a few buddies attending BYU who he will now get to hang out with.

This is a new adventure that we both just wanna start already. We've been waiting since the begining of October to start this..and we're 'tired' of waiting (well..maybe I'm just tired of waiting) We're excited for our new opportunities and a chance to plant our feet into the ground and get our lives going!

Crafts by Inspiration

Well, I've decided that I have zero crafting skills whatsoever. On Wednesday, I met with my Visiting Teacher, Lizzie, and she had shown me a skirt that she made a few years ago and a blanket sewing kit that her mother had sent her for Halloween. She had invited me to make skirts with her and I was rather embarrassed to tell her that I had no idea how to even start making a skirt. Since then, I have decided that I am going to learn to get crafty.

I have a few ideas of things that I'd like to make:

The first thing would be a few skirts. When Lizzie showed me her modest that she had made, I got super jealous! I'm not 100% sure of the fabric I'd like to use, but I think I'm going to challenge myself and try to make my skirt have pockets (if that's a challenge?)

Second, I want to learn how to really crochet again. I learned how to make a simple knot a few years ago, but nothing more than that. After spending Conference Weekend at Jayson's parent's house and watching Taylor, his sister, crochet several blankets, it sparked my creative mind.

And finally, Jayson and I really need coasters. I was browsing on the internet at craft idea's and I found a site that explains how to make coasters for a grand total of about a $1.50 or less and figured that those would be a lot cheaper than going out and buying coasters.

And I'm pretty sure I'll come up with more idea's soon!

Finding our place

September has been full of surprises. It marked our first full month of being married, and might I say it hasn't been all fun and games (imagine that!).

Don't get me wrong, we have been having tons of fun! We finally were able to take a week off from work in September to celebrate our marriage, which we spent at the Disneyland Resort! (obviously ;)

This was taken on our balcony at the hotel while we were watching the fireworks

We are very blessed to have this home that we live in as well as two stable jobs. However, even with these three great blessings life is still hard. For example, I just got a job working at Red Robin at the end of July and I absolutely love it. I love the learning experience I've had and the chance I've had to better communicate with people, as well as build relationships with my managers and co workers. I find it very surprising that I get along with every person I work with. You don't find that to happen at most jobs..

Even though I absolutely love my job, it gets frustrating at times. I have an inconsistent schedule- one week I could have 5 shifts and the next I could have 3. One day my schedule will say I need to work 5 hours, and I'll get sent home after 2 1/2. That's because it depends on how busy the restraunt gets, which is understandable and sometimes I like going home early, but it can also get frustrating when it comes time to pay our bills. Luckily we are still able to make ends meet even if I'm not making the money I hoped I would be.

The other thing that is changing is our current location of living. I have lived in Thousand Oaks my whole life and the only time I have ever left the state was for vacations to Kauai, Las Vegas, and Utah. For a long time I was completely against the idea of ever moving out of California. I like the sunshine and the constant warmness :) Anything colder than 60 degrees just doesn't sound like fun to me... Anyway, I finally opened up to the idea of moving to Utah after having spent a week in Salt Lake City area over the summer. Since Jayson is trying to get accepted to the University of Utah in fall of 2012, we decided it would be best to move up there as soon as possible and establish residency. We have been searching for jobs and locations to live all month. We have found several opportunities and now we are just waiting to hear responses.

Life has a funny way of throwing you through a loop. We thought we had finally found our stable nitch here in Newbury Park after finding a wonderful home (we may just be renting a room from a house, but it is still better than we had expected), Jayson being able to regain his employment at the Westlake Village Inn since returning from his mission, and me being able to get a job at Red Robin. After constant conversations about our options, we still need to make one more change. Finding our place is not coming as easily as we had expected, but we know and trust that the Lord has a plan for us. There is a reason why we are needing to relocate and make adjustments in our lives, and we know that what ever that reason is that it will be for our benefit and prepare a new path for us to follow in the future.

I'm excited for the change ;) HERE COMES SOME SNOW!!!

This was taken a few nights ago- we have fun together ;)

Ashley Anderson should NOT bake

I always knew I wasn't cut out for the whole "wife that bakes everything all the time" title, and last night proved that!

Jayson called me on his break at work and had asked me to make up some bread dough so we could have fresh bread. Its not that I didn't wanna help out, I'm just not very patient when it comes to cooking, and I somehow always mess up so I joke about how my cooking will kill someone or make them sick. Jayson convinced me that everything would be alright and he had faith that I could do this...

As convincing as he was, I still knew this wasn't a good idea, but I wanted to be helpful and learn to do something new. So I grabbed the ingredients necessary and the mixer and got started. (This next part is the dumbest thing ever, and I have no clue why I did it) I started to put the mixing rods into the hand-held mixer and locked them into place. I wanted to make sure they were locked in before I started using it, so I put my hand in front of the beaters waiting to catch them if they accidentally fell out (ya, stupid..I know). I accidentally turned the mixer on too high and startled myself and the next thing I knew, my finger was twisted inside the mixer :(

So now I've got a lovely little finger splint on my left-ring finger. I must say that only having 9 fingers to work with is a lot harder than I thought... But hey, in the end, I did make a pretty yummy loaf of bread ;)

Spinach, Strawberries, and Granola

Hello all!

Jayson and I have come to the conclusion that when we both get lazy, especially after working night time shifts, we resort to eating fast food/snack foo

d/unhealthy food instead of cooking a balanced meal. It's not that we dislike cooking, it just gets time consuming and..lets face it, who wants to cook at 11:30 at night? Ya..not us.

So anyway, we decided that we would cut out all fast food and as much unhealthy food items as possible. We started looking up healthy recipes online and I came across this super yummy salad!

Spinach, Strawberries, and Granola

• one bag of fresh spinach
• 1/4 cup of granola (you can find different types in a bag at the grocery store)
• 5-7 fresh strawberries

1. Using as much spinach as you like, chop up to smaller pieces (it helps to eat smaller bites than the leaves) and add to bowl.
2. Chop 2-3 strawberries into bite sized pieces and add to bowl
3. Mix the spinach and strawberries to ensure that every bite will have spinach and strawberry!
4. Repeat steps 1-3 depending on how big or little of a salad you'd like
5. Add the 1/4 cup of granola and toss the salad

And there you have it! The recipe I found didn't call for the granola, and gave instructions for how to make a dressing.. but I did not have the ingredients to do so at home, so I decided to add the granola myself. I must say that it was a yummy concoction! And the best thing about it? It takes 7 minutes to make!!

(I didn't take this picture..the one I had taken was way too large)