Seeking out new life and new civilizations

Yes, that was a Star Trek reference. We LOVE Star Trek!

The characters, the missions, the discussions, the romance, the action, the adventure, the moral dilemmas, so intriguing! I had only seen a few minutes of one TNG episode when I was ten. I thought Trek was only for nerds and geeks. But my honey grew up watching it. His dad and brothers like it too, but we like it the most. In fact, come to think of it, we are the biggest Star Trek fans I know. ha! I dream about it often, I dream I am in the Star Trek world, it feels so real.
We have watched every single episode in order except for the last season of The Original Series. To those of you that have only seen the newer Star Trek movies with Christopher Pine, you are missing out! The newer movies are set in an alternate universe, and the cinematography, the cast, the characters, the stories are not even close to being as deep and thought-provoking as most of the television show episodes. Most recently, we have been re-watching "Enterprise".

Which aired in 2001-2005, it's the most recent Star Trek tv show. We have even started showing some of the episodes to the kids, it's TV-PG.
Oh, yeah and we like to dress our kids up like Spock.

In April we have tickets to Salt Lake Comic-Con, which will have most of the Star Trek: The Next Genergation Cast! http://saltlakecomiccon.com/project_category/star-trek-the-next-generation/
 cool! Don't worry, tons of nerdy/geeky pics coming.
One last confession. Yes, we named one of our kids after a Star Trek character, Wesley Crusher.

Geneology, I am doing it

Yes, I actually am! It is soooooooo fun! I've always been interested in genealogy/family history but the past few months I have taken it to a whole new level. Seriously! It all started with some great young women activities where we all learned to login to familysearch.org and submit names to take to the temple. Then I went home and showed Justin how to do it. Now Michael is even doing it! It is so easy and fun. Justin & I have been to the temple several times doing tons of family names and it is so special each time. We have also been verifying that our family tree's are accurate. Which some are not. So, I have contacted my dad, my grandpa, my grandma, and several of Justin's grandparents about getting pictures and stories of ancestors.

My grandparents, David & Carolyn & their eight kids

It really took off from there. There was one time when I couldn't find pictures of one set of my grandma's grandparents, I asked several people who I thought would know and they had no idea. My grandpa said he thought he might have some pictures of them so I set a time to meet with him at his house to find the pictures. When I got there I told him the names of the people I was looking for and he took me into this back bedroom and lo and behold there were two gigantic 20 by 30 framed paintings of them!

After taking pictures of them my grandpa then told me everything he remembered about them and started crying, and I started crying, and it was a really special experience. For Christmas I made my brother, sister, & parents family tree's. It was a lot of work.

Lots of compiling, printing, cutting, and glittering

I also put labels on each picture

For my sister's family

For my brother's family

For my parent's ( I went back much further)

Here are Justin's grandparent, Carol & Dee over 50 years ago

Here are Carol & Dee now :)

A few weeks ago I attended Roots Tech in Salt Lake City. It is the biggest family history conference in the world. It was amazing! I'll have to post more on that later.

Making the Trek Northward

Another huge life changing event I wanted to update the blog on was our move. Yes, we moved from Springville to Lehi. We actually moved from Springville to Farmington to Lehi, but more on that later. It all started in the spring of 2012. We had originally planned on staying in Springville for 5-10 years, but Justin's job's kept bringing him north. First with AtTask, they moved from Orem to Lehi. Then he got his current job with EMC, which is located even further north in Draper. The commute was terrible, especially because there was a huge construction project happening directly along his commute. He was not a fan. Not just becasue of the hassle of the drive, but because it took him away from the family for an extra 1.5-2.5 hours a day, depending on traffic and weather. He even tried carpooling, which helped. But eventually after praying about it and going to the temple about it we decided to start making plans to move further north. Another motivation for moving further north was being closer to our families. So, since I was pregnant at the time, we decided that we would improve our house the best that we could now, then right after having the baby we would put our house up for sale. Fixing up our house was fun. Here are some of the projects:

New floors.

Front porch and landscaping project.

large amounts of priming, painting, and more tearing out old carpet, and installing new flooring. (this is the old carpet)

Our house went on the market when Conrad was one month old. We had about 3-5 showing a week. Here is the house blog I made: http://housewithcharm.blogspot.com. this whole time, we started looking at houses, which was very exciting. 

I wanted to look in the Salt Lake Valley, but Justin wanted to stay in Utah Valley. After realizing that not only is SL about 10-15% more $, but the yards are typically smaller, especially in the neighborhood I wanted to be in, (Daybreak). We signed the papers to build the home we are now in in September of 2012. We sold our Springville house just in time, closing in November of 2012. 

Floral Designing & Balance

As most of you probably know, I attended the Utah School of Floral Design in 2010.

Here I am with some of my fellow classmates. Shorly afterward, I officially started Field of Gold Floral Design, my flower design business. I did several weddings, mother's days, one valentine's day, and several other small projects.

I love flowers, I really do. I enjoy working with them. Unfortunatly, I had a really hard time balancing the flower business with motherhood, and my housewife duties. Because of this, I came to the conclusion and realization that now is not the season in my life to be starting businesses, big or small. Being the best mother and wife I can be comes first priority in my life right now. I'm not going to lie, Yes, occasionally I dream of being a working mom, but because of this experience and my experience with being an Avon lady, I think when the time comes for me to pursue a money-making opportunity, I would want to work for someboody else, in an office, outside of the home. For now, that is at least a few years in the future. I have found a new purpose and appreciation for being a stay-at-home mom. I try harder to cherish every moment with my sweet kids. I count myself extremely lucky that I am married to the most wonderful hard-working man I know.

A New Way to Cook

Our old oven and range.

Our new oven and range.

mR. bIRTHDAY

So, Justin is now 29. Wow! We had a week of partying to celebrate. He got a transformer because he is still a child at heart.  ;) Michael just loves it. He also got some tools to put in his newly decorated and painted workshop in the backyard. (Sorry no pics of that) I think his favorite present was his Bachelors Degree. Woohoo!

Krishna

 I am so excited to introduce Krishna, the kitten we got for Christmas. She is a female pure-bred Bengal, and she has my same birthday. For real!

She is so cuddly and soft and sweet!

Justin adores her. I'm starting to get a little jealous of the way he pets her while we watch Star Trek.

Krishna loves to explore and is very curious. Wesley, my animal-lover, chases her around and pets her and tries to pick her up. Michelangelo takes care of her and Francesca enjoys grabbing at her fur. She has gorgeous green eyes and a meow that sounds like a toy cat.

Having a cat around the house is very exciting. Me and Justin have wanted a cat ever since we've been married but our landlords never allowed it so now we have our own place we finally could own one. We found her on the classifieds at ksl.com, and when we went to meet her they told us her birthday and we knew it was meant to be.

I got the idea for her name from a character in a book series I read as a teenager called "The Last Vampire" By Christopher Pike. There are also many Krishna's in Hindu theology, here is one artists rendition of Krishna: 

I also felt it was an exotic-type name and she is an exotic breed of cat. The Bengal Breed was born from a domestic cat and an Asian Leapord Cat. This is an Asian Leopard Cat.

We love having Krishna and look forward to having her around for years to come. Cat Power!

Tickle Torture!

This is one of my favorite pictures from the past few weeks or so. It was a fun summer, even when we were just giving tickle tortures at home, in fact sometimes those are the best times.