East Coast Girl

Well, this is rather embarrassing. MORE THAN A YEAR WITHOUT A POST? That's totally unacceptable. (I'm not really sure what happened to the pictures... so I'll have to figure that out later). I'm not going to stress about what I've missed - because frankly there is no way I will be able to fill all you lovelies in on everything - so I will start with what's been happening recently.
After a long, hard, slow, dreadful, cold,(are you getting the picture yet?) couple years, Mike and I were finally able to get out of Idaho! YIPEE! Mike graduated with his BS degree in Financial Economics; but please don't mistake that for Business Finance because he will certainly correct you. ;) He worked his tooshie off trying to finish those last couple months of school and I mean seriously, he's the hardest worker I've ever known. Before we moved out, (I'll get to the whereabouts in just a moment) he had to go through the refiners fire of applying for jobs. That was the biggest headache in the world - having to worry about not having somewhere to go, and then figuring out our future from somewhere we didn't want to stay. Just stressful all around. One of the businesses that called him up was Vanguard in Scottsdale, AZ saying they were interested in the sexy, hilarious, crazy, financial economics dude who applied. Oh wait, they didn't say that. Anyway, so they called and got him an interview in Scottsdale which was on a Thursday; right in the middle of the school week. That was fun for him to work around but he won them over and got them to offer him a job. THANKFULLY, and I mean that in the best way possible, they had job openings in the Philadelphia, PA area too which gave us a choice between the two. Arizona is great and grand but living there, in our opinion, was less adventurous than the East Coast. So what did we decide? Arizona. No, I'm kidding. We decided on Philadelphia. After that major decision had passed all we had to do was get Mike through the last couple months of school and head out! It was bliss until finals week. Then I had to worry about him surviving those tests and passing those classes in order to graduate to get his job. I mean he thought he was stressed?! His poor wife ;)
Meanwhile, I am working at a job that came to me at just the right moment. Originally, I was working at a bank. First of all, I hate banks. I've known that since I was little because both of my parents worked for banks. HELLO!!! It's cool though, because like I said a job came out of no where (actually from a customer of the bank) that saved my sanity. It was beautiful and full time and more pay and fabulous and everything else on the planet. It was perfect. (Not sure where I was going with this story, but that's what happened.)
Ok, so now back to the story of moving to the East Coast. It was fun getting everything packed... and if you couldn't tell that last sentence was dripping with sarcasm. But, alas, I got through it while Mike finished his finals. Chris came out to help us move, which was amazing because that meant I got to fly out to Pennsylvania instead of driving. I. Will. Not. Complain. Unfortunately, once Mike was on the road, I was pretty much guilt tripped by my own brain the whole time I was relaxing at home waiting for the day to come to fly out to PA. You see, Mike was sick and he hadn't slept well in the previous months because of random stressors. So while I was hangin out with my family eating Panda (his favorite Chinese fast food) he was suffering and miserable for 36 hours of driving straight through to our future home. Yeah, I felt like the best wife award could have gone straight to me for sure. Ouch. But besides that, I had a fabulous time with my family before I left. There was a lot of crying and blubbering that went on but I was so glad that I got to spend a little bit of Christmas with them. I miss them a lot.
When I finally got to Pennsylvania (on Christmas Eve), I was so excited to see Mike! Even though we're not a newly married couple anymore (in Mormon terms) I was still dying to see him after a week. I mean really, am I pathetic? The first thing Mike and I did after he picked me up from the airport was have dinner with Dan and Allison! It was amazing and the perfect way to welcome me to the East Coast. We had soup (Gnocci something or other) and it was to die for. I've been craving it ever since. (And I got to meet Mason for the first time. And I love him. And I love Connor.)
That was the beginning of the quickest couple months I have experienced in my entire life. I got to PA, we had Christmas which was fantastic, I tried to get over the time change which took me like a week, we had New Years, Mike started his job and I started online school, we found an apartment, we waited, waited some more, and then finally moved in. I'm going to speak for both of us right now.... WE LOVE IT HERE! We absolutely love it. It's 1000% better (in terms of noise, bugs, space, and move-in-cleanliness) than our apartment in Idaho. Even though the apartment was probably built in the Stone Age, I'm happy with it. We are happy with it and that's all that matters.
Another amazing thing we love about living in this apartment is the ward that we are able to be a part of. Holy Smokes you guys, these people are the most amazing group I have ever seen. They are so welcoming and interested in each other's lives and they don't care about money. They don't care! I can't tell you how much I appreciate that about people because they don't let their jobs and their pay checks define them or their thoughts about anyone else. Amazing amazing people. They will do anything for you and it has helped us get into that same mind set which is such a blessing. We have learned so much just by being around people who care. It was a tender mercy to move into this ward and I know that we needed it right now. When we were living in Idaho and going to church there, it was extremely difficult to feel part of the ward. We were fortunate enough to be in a family ward but they had so many students moving in and out that they just kind of gave up on getting to know any of the students. Even after a year and a half of being there, people who I had had conversations with were still asking if I was new. {sigh} I have always been a religious person and it's always been important to me, but I can tell you that I hated going to church for that year and a half. It impacted me in ways that I don't like and I am seeing those effects carried in myself now. I know that one of the reasons we needed to be here, in this specific place, was so that we could grow into the people we have had goals to become. Mike and I have had so many conversations about how perfectly this situation is crafted to this time in our life. We were struggling with church, He put us in an amazing ward who cared and loved us from day 1. We were struggling financially, he helped us find an apartment that fit our budget. We needed to stretch our testimonies, the bishop called us as ward missionaries. I could fill the rest of my journal pages with the ways that we have been blessed and we make sure to talk about it every day. We want to live in this moment because we have seen the effects of looking forward to the future too much. It robs us of happiness. Even though it's really easy right now, we want to make sure to hold on to our gratitude.
So many other things happened on our move out here like our car having problems, valentines day, our stay at Mike's parents house, our birthday week, decorating our apartment, etc. but I feel that that's a great note to end on. Be grateful for the things you have because it brings so much happiness and satisfaction. I have felt peace here like I have never felt before.
 I will post an update on our apartment once we have everything completely unpacked.
Thanks for reading! And thanks to Nicole for pushing me to update my blog finally. ;)

The beginnings of packing in Rexburg

Me taking a break from cleaning and taking advantage of AMAZING light

Mike's reaction when he found out I made him a Harry Potter Wand... ;) Nerd

Preston and Bentlee on Christmas

I want to eat him.

 These are pictures of random times when I just happened to have my camera

Bentlee and Preston playing in the first big snowfall.