Harry Potter WORLD!!!! and the rest of the trip

So for the most exciting day! We went to Universal studios on Tuesday and got to enjoy the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!! It was absolutely phenomenal! And must I say, I wish I could have a butterbeer with every single meal. It was just absolutely amazing and so worth the trip!!! HAHA, not that there wasn't more amazing stuff. The rides were great, had amazing technology/graphics that just blew me away. Ollivanders shop was really cool, and though I didn't buy a wand because I knew it would just get forgotten and be clutter in my house, the gentleman who did the show before going into the shop and chose the child to volunteer to get a wand did an amazing job at being eccentric. Overall just fabulous! There a a LOT of pictures for this, so I'll just refer you to Facebook where I have all of them posted. But I'll at least post the Butterbeer photos here :)

I was really impressed by all of Universal, and with Dr. Seuss land and all the amazing characters. We also had a Caricature done which was fun and something I had never had done before.

I can't remember much more from the trip. We didn't go back to Universal even though we had one more day with our tickets, mainly due to transportation. Since we had gotten through both parks already, and the tickets were only good for one park per day/no switching in the middle of the day, we didn't feel like we wanted to be there from open to close again, which was the only time the bus from our hotel went there. So instead we spent a day at Downtown Disney to get shopping done for Christmas and see a movie. The movie theatre there had a part that was dine and watch, sort of like the theatre here in Nampa, only way more high tech. There was a button on the table in front of us you'd press when you were ready to order or needed a refill or anything like that and the waiters/waitresses came to you. It was also set up Edwards style, so with big comfy seats and lots of room. We had the 4 seats in our row all to ourselves which was nice to spread out on.

On the way back home our flight out of Orlando was delayed, causing us to miss our connection in Minneapolis. So we ended up having about a 5 hour lay over there. Which gave us plenty of time to make a quick trip to the Mall of America!!! It was cool to see it, and someday we'll go back and spend more time there. We didn't get very far, and only went to GameStop to shop where I got the limited Edition Zelda 3ds. Tee Hee. :)

Well, after getting back to the airport, we had signed up to give up our seats if the flight was overbooked. Well, it was overbooked, but only because they brought the wrong plane to our gate. It was too small and there weren't enough seats for everyone! Josh and I had been upgraded to first class because of the delay before, and the 4th row that was supposed to be first class was actually the first row of coach... Well, we ended up just giving up our seats and getting vouchers for flights, food, and hotel. We flew into SLC instead and stayed the night there before finally getting back to Boise Sunday late morning. It was all totally worth the vouchers we got which helped us go to my cousins wedding in St. George in June and then also got us tickets to Disneyland this coming January :)

More to come later :)

DisneyWorld Continued

We spent Sunday At the Animal Kingdom.We went to Rain Forest Cafe which was a bad idea for lunch. We had gone to Rainforest Cafe in Anaheim when we went to Disneyland for our honeymoon and had horrible service and horrible food. Well this time we had better service but the food was still very subpar. So we have definitely learned our lesson and will not be going back!

There was a ride called Dinosaur that was pretty intense and we couldn't imagine taking children on it. We went on a "Safari" ride and saw a lot of cool animals. Ostrich eggs, the Rhino up close. From far away we saw a female lion though I didn't see that we took a picture. That was really fun. At one point the Ostrich stood in front of the vehicle so we were stopped for a while waiting for him/her to get out of the way.
Next day was Monday and we went to the Magic Kingdom. I still think haunted Mansion was one of my favorite rides because of the cool effects at the end. I have NO idea if it's like Disneyland's or not because that ride was closed when we got there. It seemed pretty crowded in the streets but it wasn't very crowded waiting for the rides.

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The castle was of course gorgeous. Especially at night!! And I love seeing it all decorated for Christmas!! It just makes it that much better. Well this seems like enough for today. I'll post about Hollywood Studios and HARRY POTTER WORLD later this week :)

Only 9 months later...

Well, it seems I've waited a long time to post again, and it seems I have a LOT I need to update.

So First off, we are back in Boise, actually Nampa at this point. I finally moved back to Boise with Josh over the Thanksgiving holiday. We moved into some apartments across from Chris and Jill. I went right back to Primary Health on State Street.

Our trip to Orlando was amazing! We had such a good time. We got there on Friday afternoon and after getting our luggage and our rental car made our way into town to find some grub. We settled on McDonald's, cause we're fancy like that ;-).

On Saturday morning we got up around 6 so we could go to the first session at the temple at 7:30 that morning. Orlanda has such a beautiful temple. It was such a great experience, there were only 4 of us in that session and the spirit was so strong and it was such a different experience with so few of us. Well after the session I talked with one of the ladies that helped direct the session for probably a good 20 minutes. She was so sweet and it was fun to talk to her. She told  me that the first session on Saturday was always empty but after that they never had enough room. It was easy to see this was true, the temple was packed as we were leaving and there were a lot of couples there to get married/sealed or to get their endowments. It is always such a blessing to see so many people at the temple and know it's so right :)

 Orlando Temple

 This was right after the temple picture... but I'm thinking it is from a wedding we went to summer of 2011

Me in front of the fountain at the temple

Anyway, so after the temple we changed and headed straight for Universal Studios Orlando!!

Josh does not let me take pictures often, so I'll try and add pictures of him if I ever find any...

Universal was a lot of fun. The movie scenes were so cool. The Twister was one of my favorites. The Mummy ride was impressive as was, surprisingly, the Simpson's ride. Here are just a few more pictures from this day

 This was at the restaurant we ate at. They had a lot of classic cars, as well as the dog from MIB, though it doesn't seem we took a picture of him... You'll find as this goes on we're not the best at taking pictures.

 Well, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it, but Josh is in this one!!

 The big Christmas tree. Since we came the first week in December everything was decked out in Holiday style. It was very awesome!

Well, I think this is enough for today. I'll try and get the rest of our trip up in the next week or so... This was only day one, but I'm sure the rest will go much quicker, especially as the pictures get fewer. haha.

Long Month

Well, August finally ended, I had put it my two weeks and Primary Health and September 2nd was my last day. I was so so excited with the prospect of finally getting to live with Josh full time and not have a 2 hour commute twice a week.... oh how little I knew at the time.

I also started 2 new jobs, one of which was only for 2 1/2 days. That was at the Blue Cross of Idaho office here in TWF, and basically I sat around reading books the whole time and answered the phone when it rang, which was maybe 10 times total the whole time I was there. There were also a few customers who walked through the door to drop off payments, nothing too exciting. They gave me a little thank you bag afterwards with lots of awesome goodies inside. One of which was a windshield cover thing. I have no idea the technical name for it, but the reflector thing you put in a windshield to keep the inside of the car from supposedly getting too hot? Also included an umbrella and some post it stuff, and a 2 sided pen/screwdriver thing. So on one side you take the cap off and it's a Phillips head, and then the opposite side is a Flathead. Not too shabby, we have plenty of the screwdrivers, but I was excited for the windshield shield (haha) and the umbrella.

The other job is for Transystems, which is a trucking company that hauls the sugar beets to the sugar factories. I will be working in the office processing new hire paperwork, payroll, and many more things I'm sure which I have yet to learn of. I'm pretty excited to learn more about that.

Well, all of that being said.... Josh is moving back to Boise. He was offered the Assistant Manager position at the Airport, and he accepted. This is a very good thing, and I am pretty confident he will be very happy there, as well as back in Boise. I, however, just got settled in to Twin, am not excited at the prospect of packing and moving again so soon... so we are unsure at this time what I will be doing. For now I will stay here and work. This idea however changes every few hours, so who knows what will really happen....

On a more happy note, we are just a very few short months away from our fabulous Orlando vacation in December!!!

Hope all is well with everyone!!

Love Josh and Jennifer

New Place

Well, I spent the majority of the day yesterday getting everything unpacked. And while all the essentials are unpacked, there is still a lot of cleaning up to do. Hopefully I can get motivated to get it all done before I leave for Boise for the rest of the week.

We got really lucky at finding a house to rent. It was actually one of Josh's customers that he rented to at the Airport. She mentioned she was in town to check up on the two houses so owns over here, and Josh asked if she rented them. We were heading up to UT for the family reunion that weekend and she said if she wanted us to stop by and look at the house we were welcome to.  We looked at it, and it is much bigger than where we were. Granted, I don't have the things to feel it up with, but that's okay, we'll have plenty of room if people want to come visit and spend time at the Temple here. She also accepted the price we wanted to pay. We got very lucky!! :)

It has a pretty large living room, and at the end near the kitchen we set up our dining table. The kitchen is a little smaller, but still bigger than what we had and is open as opposed to just a straight line with the cupboards parallel to each other. It has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. The Master is so much bigger than I'm used to! I am absolutely loving that! I haven't spent much time in the backyard, it has about 4 big trees that take up a lot of the space, but still has room to hang out. It has a pretty nice front yard as well. Overall I have beenv ery pleased with it.

I'm feeling okay about having to spend a few days each week in Boise, but will be so happy when I can find a job here. A 2 hour commute is kind of ridiculous... lol. I put in quite a few applications and resumes yesterday and hopefully I'll get a bite from at least one of them. I will just have to wait and see though.

We changed internet service providers, because Clear doesn't have coverage over here. We went with Cable One. The guy at Best Buy we talked to said that this is one of the test areas for their new fast speed. I haven't noticed anything to be disappointed about yet. The price wasn't near as scary as I was expecting either. The house was also already set up for Cable, so I didn't have to wait for anybody to come down and set it all up, I just plugged in the modem and was good to go!!

Because we switched, I also had to change my e-mail address. Lesson learned, don't go with the internet service provider for the e-mail. I couldn't decide which service to use so I just used the same as Josh's.

We're also trying to decide if Hulu is a better deal than Netflix. So far the only thing I think might be better about Hulu is that since we don't have TV, we can watch current episodes. Yet at the same time, we don't watch much on the TV anyway. Though I was glad to see that Glee was on Hulu as well as Drop Dead Diva. Josh wasn't as lucky at finding shows he wanted to watch. We'll try the 1 week trial and see what we want to do then.

Moving

So, a lot has happened since the last time I posted. First off, Josh got a promotion at work. He will be assistant manager of the Twin Falls/Hailey Branch. So we are moving this weekend. Josh will be starting his new position on Monday, Aug 1st. I'll be staying at my job here in Boise until I find a new one over there. I'll only be working 3 days a week here so the majority of my time will still be in Twin Falls.

We also went to family reunion this weekend for my Mom's side of the family and it was so great! All of us cousin's are grown up and our family is growing! We started out by going to the Manti Temple, which was such a great experience to have the family there and know that we are all on the right path! We then continued on to my Uncle's cabin which he's still working on, but it was nice and big and plenty of room for all of us!!

Josh was most excited to be able to ride the horses, so we went on about 1 1/2 hour ride and that was fun. We even got to have the horses run for a bit which wasn't something I had gotten to experience before and I enjoyed it so much!!

The rest of the time was spend hanging out with family and taking naps and everything was awesome! I am definitely looking forward to continuing that every year. We used to do family reunions every year when Grandma was alive, but after she passed we've only done it once or twice. I'm glad we'll be starting to do them more often. I miss being able to see my cousins and know what is going on with everyone.

The next big trip is Disney World!! Only 4 months away and I just can not wait! It should be a lot of fun for Josh and I!

Well, I guess I'm not very good at elaborating on anything, so still a short post, but plenty happening! Back to packing now :)

Loving Summer!

So it's been almost 2 months since I last updated!! I don't think too much has really changed though. Summer has finally arrived and it has been so hot and sunshiney and beautiful!! I haven't gotten to enjoy being outside too much yet though :(

On the fourth I had a day off of work so spent it in Nampa with the family and that was a lot of fun! It was the perfect temperature to play outside in the water and splash around and enjoy the company of my nieces and mom and dad and sister. While we were all playing in the water dad built the kids a treehouse! It looked great! He's such an amazing guy, got it all built and put together and I don't think it took more than 3 hours!! The girls of course absolutely loved it!! Josh had to work that day so that was 3 Independence days in row that we didn't get to spend together. We are determined to be able to enjoy the holiday together next year!!!

We have put a hold on the house hunting until we know a bit more about what our next "life" step is going to be. Which is basically all going to come down to Josh's promotion and where that will take us. Hopefully we'll know before too much longer. He grills (takes this test and interviews with the area manager I think it is?? to be able to go from Management Trainee to Asst. Manager) on Tuesday and after he passes with flying colors (as he does with any test and everything else he ever tries) he'll be able to apply for the position!!

I am still loving my job and hoping that I get to continue to advance in my career as well, or I might end up as a stay at home mom, or work a couple days a week, depending on what happens next!!

Our trip to DisneyWorld is all planned and set and I am looking forward to December and know it will be here before we know it!!!

Well, I think that is a pretty good summary of the past two months! Not much changes when all we do is work!!

Oh yeah.. and my hair is now purple...