In a nutshell...

If we haven't talked in a while, you are probably wondering what has been going on in my life. For the sake of time (and space), I will try and keep this journal entry fairly short and to the point. Now, where to start? OK, I will begin with a breif re-cap of how I wound up in Salt Lake. I graduated from Central Washington University in June of 2003, and much to my dismay, my three-and-a-half-years-my-junior-brother, Tyler, graduated that same year in December, a fact that he likes me never to forget. Needless to say, he made it through college in four and a half year; it took me seven - JJ laughs and says that they call people who spend that much time in college "doctors". Well, a doctor I am not, but I do have two degrees. Enough said.

After graduating college, I spent a year as a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines, and during that time I lived in Anchorage, Alaska. After just 13 months, I knew that that was definitely not the job for me, so I moved back to Ellensburg to be with my family and our crafting business. Not long after that, my entire family (minus Ty and Molly, who by that time had been married for several years and living in McMinnville, Oregon), up and moved to our lake house. Can I just tell you that during this time, I was floundering; I felt that my life had little to no direction and I was continuing to bounce between my parents home and various apartments, as well as jobs - I just was not sure in what direction I was headed.

Looking back now, I find it rather funny that I was feeling so lost and confused... I believe that at that point, my faith was being tested, as well as my patience - something that I have never had much of. God has a plan for all of us at all times, but it will always be revealed in His way and at His will. I was in the right place at the right time, but could not see it, until I met JJ's Aunt Peggy. We were working together at Yoke's Grocery Store in Deer Park (about 10 minutes from Loon Lake), and to make a long story short, she introduced me to the man that I now call my husband.

JJ and I were engaged after struggling through seven months of a very long-distance relationship; one in which we relied on e-mails, phone calls which racked up very expensive cell phone bills, and once-monthly visits which required equally expensive plane ticket purchases. We both agree that during that time, we became expert communicators both verbally and non-verbally, something which we also agree has allowed us a firm foundation on which to build the rest of our relationship. We were married on July 21, 2007, in a beautiful and very personal evening ceremony on the shores of Deer Lake, in Eastern Washington. Our wedding was attended by many of my family members and good friends, as well as some of JJ's family and very close friends - all of whom were willing to travel a great distance for what I consider to be the most "perfect wedding I could have ever asked for".

The newly married Trimbles (we are still newlyweds after just one year, right?) happily reside in Salt Lake City, a place that for a small-town girl like me, on alternate days seems like the biggest/smallest city in the entire world. What I mean by that, for example, is that not only do I have one huge mall to shop at, but I have my choice of four huge malls, all within 20 minutes driving distance. That fact, of course, is a huge bonus; the not-so-great part is that because the city is so big, finding a doctor/dentist/hair stylist/fave coffee shop is not so easy. The "small city" feel comes from the fact that I can pretty much travel from anywhere in the city to anywhere else in about 20-30 minutes (not during rush-hour however), and because of Salt Lake's ingenious grid system, I can find just about any address in any part of the city. Cool!

Right now, I am sitting at my desk, in my fish-bowl office (so described because of the constant traffic flow in front of my desk) at Continental Engineering & Construction, Inc. I am officially a "Project Manager Assistant", which basically means that I do a ton of paper pushing, filing, phone calling, copy (and coffee) making :0), gophering, etc. Quite a change from my former retail life, huh? All in all, I love my new job - I have been in the office for five months now - and I love the people that I work with: eight men and one woman. Hmmmm... could the reason that I love my job so much be the fact that I work mainly with men all over the age of 50??? Yes, that is most certainly the reason!

JJ is a KC-135 Hydraulic Mechanic in the Air National Guard; a position which he has held for six years now, although he has been in the military for eleven. His job is a bit hard to explain, as he is career military even though he is in the guard. He is employed by the Air Force to work 40 hours per week as a mechanic at the National Guard Base here in Salt Lake, but he also does his "one weekend a month, two weeks a year" commitment for the guard. Yeah, I don't really get it either. Since we have been married, JJ has been deployed twice, once to Guam for several weeks, and once to Kyrgyzstan for a little over a month. Each time he is gone, my feelings are bittersweet: I am thankful that he is only ever deployed for one to two months - as we all know, most military families are apart for at least six months at a time - and always in a non-combat zone, but like everyone else, I hate for him to be gone.

Lately, I have been getting lots of questions about starting a family, so I will tell you MY plan (JJ, so far, is just going along with it, good man that he is). We are on the pyramid plan, and it goes like this: start off with a plant and see if we can keep it alive (we actually started with three and they are still alive, albeit maybe not as healthy as they should be). Then graduate to a goldfish (we lost three until we finally sucked it up and went to PetsMart where we paid $1.50 for the fish instead of Wal-Marts more economical price of $0.79 - as far as we know, Trout is still alive at the neighbor's house; I got sick of cleaning his tank once a week). Now, we take the big step, and get a puppy. Ooops! Here we need to add step 2.5: Cat. The cat was never in my original pyramid plan, but when we found Trout at PetsMart, we also fell in love with Hobbes the Cat, who alternately looks both like JJ's and my first cats: Sabbi and Muffin. And the cat still lives after one year. So, on to step three: puppy. OK, here it get complicated, so bear with me. Last fall, I went to Arizona to help my mom and dad with their jewelry business. There I met Kip, who was the proud owner of Shadow, a beautiful, smart and very well-trained yellow lab. Now, up to this point, when JJ and I talked of getting a puppy, it was always talk of a "small breed", due to the fact that we live in a mobile-home park and have a postage stamp yard. Long story short, for Christmas JJ found out that he was going to receive a yellow lab puppy in April. Shadow had a litter of seven puppies on Valentine's Day, and arrangements were made with my mom and dad to drop "Jazzmyn" off to us on their trip back to Washington. Well, as things go in the Matthews' family, we wound up with two puppies, not just one. My parents were going to try to find "Faith" a good home in Washington, but after traveling with the two lab sisters for two days, we all realized that they could not be split up. Our two yellow labs are now six months old, and althought they are very busy, we would not trade them for the world, however, we are quickly out-growing our little mobile home.

From here on out, my journal entries will be shorter, and filled with more pictures, but I felt it was necessary to give a little background information so that from here on out, you won't be lost.