Happy New Years!!!

So, I am so excited for the new year! Not that 2009 hasn't been a good year, I am excited to start fresh this next year! I have been so blessed this year! I have come to have a greater understanding of the Atonement this year and that the Savior really truly does know each one of us and loves us more than we can ever imagine! I wish everyone knew this, and that there is someone that cares about them! I am so grateful for my family and all that they mean to me! I have been blessed with such wonderful parents who show me so much love! I want them to know that I will always love and support them! I also am so grateful for Nick! He is amazing! He treats me like a queen! I don't know what I did to deserve him! I can't believe that we celebrated our one year anniversary this year! I'm excited to spend the rest of FOREVER with him! I am also grateful for my friends! They always seem know how to answer my prayers, whether it be a letter in the mail letting me know that they are thinking about me, or telling me that they are here visiting their family from out of state, or coming by to see me while me and Nick are up in Logan at a hotel! I am so blessed! I could keep going about all of the wonderful things that Nick, my parents and my friends have done for me this year, but I don't want this to be too long. But I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy and safe New Years!!! Love you all!!!

Halloween First American style!!!

So, I want to state the fact that I absolutely love my work! They are awesome! So, Halloween is like the biggest holiday there and it is a HUGE competition between all of the departments. Well this year my department was a cemetery, so we all got to dress up as dead people! It was awesome! Each department got to pick the best costume from their group for the top three best costumes, the catagories were; scariest, funniest, and most creative...I believe. I can't quite remember. But oh well, that's not all that important, except for the fact that I won the scariest costume! I was so excited!!! Have I mentioned that I love my job?!?! Well, in case I haven't, I totally do! We also had a potluck today, and I made a cute pumpkin cake, here are some picture of the festivities today.

Here is my cute cake, no one wanted to cut into it.

One year and counting...

We have now been married for one year! And let me say, it has been the best year of my entire life! I am still so much in love with Nick! He is amazing! I am truly blessed to have him as my very own for forever! For our anniversary we went up to Park City for the weekend, it was a lot of fun! We just relaxed, which was wonderful since we have both been sick. The weather up there was amazing! It couldn't have been a prettier weekend! Here are some pictures over the last year! Enjoy!

Update....

So, I have been a total slacker when it comes to blogging. I apologize, a lot has happened the last couple of months. Lets see, I got laid off from Envision, which was a complete blessing. I am loving where I am at now, it is First American Real Estate Tax Services, I love the people I work with, and surprisingly enough, I don't mind paying other people's taxes. Other than getting a new job, not a whole lot has been going on, we are still loving being married! As a matter of fact, I think it is the best thing in the whole world! Oh, we started watching the season's of Smallville. I got them for Nick for Christmas last year, and it is has been a lot of fun! I am a huge fan, well I have always been a huge fan of Clark Kent and Lois Lane! But that's about how exciting our life has been the last little while. Hope you have a great day!

Proud to be an American!!!

Happy 4th of July!!! So, I'm sorry that I haven't blogged lately. Life with the Jones's has been pretty hectic as of late. With the both of us getting the lovely swine flu, and with work I just haven't had much time to post. So, I apologize.

Last week we went to Lagoon with Nick's work for his summer party. It was a ton of fun! It was crazy busy there but there was hardly any lines! It was awesome! The only lines we had to wait in were for "Wicked", which was amazing! And then we had to wait in line for Rattlesnake Rapids. It was fun too! All of the other lines were maybe about 5 minutes long. We used our bounce back passes yesterday and took Kimmy and Alex, (Nick's brother and sister). It was quite fun, the weather was perfect! It couldn't have been any better. We only waited in one line and it really wasn't that bad. We went on Rattlesnake Rapids 3 times in a row and it was great! There was no line at all! Everytime we went on it, I just happened to go under the waterfall and I was soaking wet.

After Lagoon next week we went with Amy, Manny and the kids to Taylorsville Dayzz. It was a lot of fun. I had tons of fun watching Nichole and Tyson going down the slides. They couldn't get up fast enough, they were hilarious! The fireworks were amazing! It made me feel so proud to be an American and live in America. It was one of the best firework shows that I have seen!

Nichole was so cute! She was so tired, she came and climbed onto Nick's lap and fell asleep. She didn't even flinch during the fireworks! I love that little girl!

This morning we went to the Sandy City fair, with the kids. It was a lot of fun. We did crafts and all kinds of fun things! I love the 4th of July! It always makes me so happy to live in America! We are all so blessed to live here! We don't realize all that we really do have!

A Tribute to Truman Madsen

Truman Madsen passed away this morning. He was such an amazing man. I have a special place in my heart for him. I will never forget meeting him at a time in my life when I was struggling. I will never forget the love that emanated from him. Also when he looked into my eyes and started talking to me I knew that everything was going to work out. All though we mourn his passing here on earth, can you just imagine the celebrations that are happening on the other side? I can imagine him sitting with Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and all of the prophets that he has studied so much about. Truman Madsen has helped my love of Church history grow so much! I love watching his DVD's on the early years of the Church. I have been blessed to have met such an amazing man!

Here is the article about his death from LDS Living:





Truman Madsen, well known LDS scholar and educator, died this morning after a long battle with cancer.

Madsen, a grandson of Heber J. Grant, was born in 1926 in Salt Lake City. He developed an interest in his Church heritage at a young age and would eventually become a recognized expert on Joseph Smith and one of the most popular lecturers among Church members on LDS topics.

After serving a mission in Canada and studying at the University of Utah and the University of Southern California, Madsen received his Master of art and PhD in history and philosophy of religion from Harvard University. Part of his legacy includes his work with leaders of other religions to better understand Mormonism.

A prolific author, Madsen has written numerous books, including Eternal Man and Christ and the Inner Life. He contributed to the five-volume Macmillan Encyclopedia of Mormonism and served as an editor for the project.
His most recent project took a similar vein his DVDs called On Sacred Ground, with this series devoted to walks in the Holy Land. The DVDs, called The Eternal Christ, include Madsen’s deep insights into and testimony of the Savior’s life. They are scheduled to be released this summer.

He served in the Church as a bishop, stake president, president of the New England Mission, and executive assistant of the Temple Square visitor’s center. Most recently, he served as the patriarch of the Provo Utah Sharon East Stake. He also served previously as director of the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies.

“Truman Madsen mastered the weighty matters, the themes of eternity, in a far-reaching range of interests: philosophy, scriptures, Jerusalem, Joseph Smith, and temples,” said D. Kelly Ogden, a friend and former associate director of the Jerusalem Center. “He has left deep impressions in ‘lives without number,’ in a worldwide context—as a professor, guest lecturer, commentator and writer, as a stake president, a mission president, as director of BYU's Jerusalem Center, and especially in his key roles as husband and father. The legacy of his brilliant mind and fervent spirit will live on for generations to come.”

Peter Johnson, who worked closely with Madsen on several projects, including On Sacred Ground and the upcoming The Eternal Christ, recalled Truman’s unique traits. “One of the things I will always remember is his humor and compassion. Everyone who knew him thought they were his best friend. And that tremendous love just reached out and touched any individual he had dealings with,” he said. “He was such Christ-like man.”

“Truman really is an amazing man," he concluded. "He is one-of-a-kind a man of tremendous intellect combined with faith and testimony. I’m so thankful that I was privileged to spend the intimate creative time that I did with such a profound thinker and man of God.”

Madsen and his wife, Ann Nicholls Madsen, are the parents of four grown children.
LDS Living, Inc.

The gorgeous Oregon Coast

Here are the pictures from yesterday of our drive through Bend to Eugene. We stopped in Redmond, Nick's second area it was way fun. Here is the picture of the post office where he droped off my letters and packages. It was so much fun to see the places that he told me about in all of the letters in person.

After we drove through Redmond we drove to Sisters, it is a small little town a lot like Park City or Jackson Hole. It was so fun there. I loved it there! We stopped a long the way at Sahalie Falls, it was breath taking! It was a beautiful drive. Here are some of the pictures.

Today we went to church in the two wards that Nick served in, in Eugene. It was way fun. It was amazing to me, to see that no matter where you go in the world where the gospel is, the church is always the same. Church was wonderful! I enjoyed it very much. After church we made our way to our hotel that we will be staying at until next Sunday. We are right on the coast, it is amazing! The drive was gorgeous. And the hotel is beautiful. We have a huge window that takes up almost the whole wall that looks out over the ocean! I love it! And there is about 130 stairwell down to the beach, we walked down there when we got here and it was very windy and cold, but beautiful. Here are the pictures.

Long drive, bugs, and Bend

We arrived in Oregon yesterday at about 3:30 pacific time. After driving for about 12 hours. Surprisingly the drive was really nice, we had perfect weather and almost no traffic. Although, I hate to admit that were many deaths along the way. Here are the pictures of the damage that was done.

Once we got to our hotel we went to Redmond, Nick's second area on his mission. It was so much fun seeing all of the places that I had heard about. We stopped by his apartment, the popular pizza place, and a coffee shop called Dutch Bros that has the most amazing smoothies! The pizza was delicious and the smoothie was one of the best that I have ever had.

Here is the door to our hotel, and this is what is across the street, we started laughing when we read what it was.

Today we will be driving to Eugene, the part where Nick spent most of is mission. I will post more pictres when we get to our hotel tonight.