I was tagged by my friend, Christa, so here goes...
5 Things on my list to do today:
1. Survive the new accounting program at work.
2. Clean my house - my brother is coming tomorrow.
3. Help my husband organize our new book case.
4. Figure something out for dinner. Any ideas?
5. Play with my puppies.
5 Snacks I enjoy:
1. Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate.
2. Home-made rice krispie treats.
3. Apples.
4. Popcorn.
5. Anything that is really, really bad for me.
5 Things I would do if I was a sudden Billionaire:
1. Give a portion to a well-researched charity.
2. Buy JJ two '56 Chevys; one to fix up and tinker with, the other in mint condition.
3. Buy houses for everyone in our family.
4. Buy a cabin on Loon Lake.
5. Go on a trip with JJ around the world.
5 Bad Habits:
1. Picking my toenails - gross, huh?
2. Drinking soda pop, especially Coke or Dr. Pepper.
3. Talking on my cell phone in the car.
4. Not keeping my clothes neat and tidy in my bedroom.
5. Forgetting Birthdays.
5 Places I have lived:
1. Loon Lake, WA
2. Ellensburg, WA
3. Anchorage, AK
4. Puebla, Mexico
5. Unai, Brazil
5 jobs I have had:
1. Floor Supervisor, Tommy Hilfiger in Park City, UT.
2. Manager for my mom's company, Goose Lake Mercantile.
3. Flight Attendant, Alaska Airlines.
4. Grocery Store Clerk - I sold cigarettes, fishing/hunting licenses and lottery tickets. Whooppee!
5. Retail, retail and more retail.
5 things most people don't know about me:
1. I am a nerd at heart.
2. I had more than one boyfriend at the same time when I lived in Brazil. Agh! It's true!
3. I wish that I could go back and do things differently during my swimming career - namely eat better and train harder in order to reach my full potential.
4. I never did get nervous, not even one time, before my wedding.
5. I have never had any broken bones (surgery on my foot does not count).
I tag:
Molly and Ty (although they are so busy with Maya, that may be a long shot) and... umm... I am new to the whole blogging world and don't have many contacts yet! :0)
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Love of My Life...
Our wedding photographer took this shot in Spokane in the early spring... It is one of my favorites of the two of us.
This is another of my favorites, taken right after we got engaged in November of 2007.
I think I got this shot by holding the camera out in front of us. Pretty good, huh? (This is probably the most recent picture of us.)Fun (But Totally Random) Pictures...
Can you tell that JJ and I went to Disneyland for our honeymoon? We had a blast!
Clowning around, like we so frequently do...
This is one of my favorites; it was on our Christmas card last year.
Gina, JJ's sister, is so funny!
Our "twins" at eight weeks.
Faith (on left) and Jazzmyn happy to be playing in the sprinkler.
Our puppies are almost grown dogs now; I can't believe it! (Faith on left, Jazz on right) And I know those of you with "human" children are just laughing at me right now :0)
This picture is a little bit dated (taken last Halloween), but it is one of my favorites! Cheyenne (on left) and Taylor are our good friends, Carl and Regina's, girls. They live about 20 minutes from us, so we are able to spend quite a bit of time together. So fun! Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Gina and Adam's Wedding...
Gina and Adam outside Uncle Steve's house in Comanche, Iowa.
Gina and I out by the pool the night before the rehersal dinner.
Right before the ceremony, we were waiting to sign the marriage certificate.
On August 16, JJ's sister, Gina, married her best friend, Adam Moore. JJ and I were both fortunate enough to be able to travel back to Comanche, Iowa, which is Adam's hometown, and the location of the wedding. I was excited to be asked to be Gina's matron of honor, and I have to say, the two of us had a blast hanging out together, enjoying each other's company, even through all of the wedding preparations. Things did get a little hectic - what wedding doesn't??? - but thanks to Adam's wonderful family and friends and all their hard work, the day went off without a hitch, and I now have a new brother-in-law. Wonderful day, wonderful party!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Our new niece...
Introducing my new niece, Maya Karen Christine Matthews
What a sweet pea!
Mom and Dad say she is a very good baby, and a good snuggler!Guess what??? I am a brand-new auntie to this beautiful little girl! Maya Karen Christine Matthews was born on August 20, 2008, and she weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces and was 21 inches long. I have yet to meet her, but am already over the moon for this little sweet pea! Many congratulations to Ty and Molly!
Monday, August 25, 2008
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.
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.
It's a start...
This is the very first time that I have ever done something like this, but after seeing my brother and sister-in-laws blog site, I decided that this may be the best way for me to "stay connected", and also give myself an outlet for my thoughts. (I promise to not get too involved with my journal :0) I have always liked journaling, so my hope is that you can have a glimpse into JJ's and my relatively "new" life together in Salt Lake City. Enjoy!~E
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