Come, Let Us Adore Him

A view of our Christmas filled living room.

Our Christmas decorated TV stand. Those stockings were made by my best friend, Tasha for our wedding. How cute are they?

A close up of the lanterns we decorated with at our wedding that I put some ornaments and ribbon in for a Christmas-y decoration!

Just a close up of our tree and some ornaments. My sister sent this to me when she visited Finland awhile ago and I have kept it and am now able to put it up on my own tree!

Our mini purple Christmas tree along with some cute shadow boxes my sister made for me! Oh, and the Ensign to remind us what's important this Christmas season.

This is something my parents gave us. (let us borrow, more like) When you light the candles, the heat rise and makes the windmill spin which turns the angels and the angels hit the bells on the side which make noise. It's pretty cool and really takes me back to my childhood.

Our Christmas Tree!

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. Family is the most important thing in my life and I've always been able to spend the holidays with mine so this year I was pretty sad when I realized that only one of my siblings will be coming back for Christmas while the others stay in their respective states and countries. I was even more sad when I realized I will only be able to spend Christmas day with my family who will be here over the holidays and that will be about it because I'll be working. Despite all this, I have tried to make the best out of it by decorating our apartment and celebrating the Christmas season here in Logan. Thankfully, I was given a good reminder what this season is really about. I was reading in the Ensign, a magazine that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints puts out, and read an article about the different people who were given the opportunity to see Christ as a baby and what we can learn from them. For those of you familiar with the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, you know there are the Wise Men and Shepherds who saw the Christ child. I was reminded that this season is really about seeking Christ and bringing ourselves close to Him, even when we aren't able to be close to our families. If you're interested in this article, you can read it here: http://lds.org/liahona/2011/12/come-let-us-adore-him?lang=eng&query=come,+let+us+adore+him 

Hopefully you have all been able to find joy in this season and celebrate that which is important to you.

Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You

Yes, I realize that everyone who will be reading this will already know Joe and I. But it's fun to hear about updates on people's lives and since I just started this blog, I figure that it will be fun to tell you what we've been up to these days. 

Joe: He just started his master's program this last August in Geotechnical Engineering, a branch of Civil Engineering. He also got on a research project through one of his professors in the department. His project is dealing with dams and where and why they fail. At least, that's how I understand it. It has been a big blessing because not only did he get a tuition waiver, he gets a stipend every month because of it. It has been a little stressful for him, but really good experience. He is currently working on his drawings for his apparatus. Don't worry, I didn't understand what that meant either. Basically, he is building a replica of a dam; hence the apparatus. His project will probably take him through next December by which time he will be done with his classes and hopefully done with graduate school! He's also the Elder's Quorum Secretary which he has also enjoyed and it's allowed him to really get to know our ward better.

Marinda: I graduated with my bachelor's in Social Work this last May from Utah State. I continued working at the College of Engineering Dean's Office through the summer, where I worked for the past 2 years of my college experience. At the end of the summer, I got a job at a residential treatment center for teenage girls. It's called Uinta Academy and it's in Wellsville which is about 25 minutes from where I live. There are currently 17 girls in the house where I work, and they all come to Uinta because of emotional disorders. It has been a really challenging job but I have learned a lot from it. It's been hard especially because I work a lot. I work weekends and holidays and all throughout May. (Brian Regan, anyone?) It feels like I never get a break. I did get 3 days off over Thanksgiving and that was wonderful to see both our families and have a break. I could write all day about my job but at the risk of boring you, I'll just say that I continually have to remind myself why I wanted to do social work and that I am there to help those girls improve their lives whether they see it or not. 

Us: We are obviously still in Logan and enjoying it. We love our friends and ward even though I don't get to go to church all that often because of my job. We are just enjoying being young and married and working hard. We hope to be in Logan until Joe is done with school and then hopefully go somewhere else so that I can get my master's and Joe can get a job.

So there you go, there's us in a nutshell. Feel free to ask any questions, we would love to answer. Hope you're all enjoying the holiday season so far!

And so it begins...

Blogging. I've been waffling for so long about creating a blog that I'm a little surprised I actually made one. For some reason, it makes me nervous that people will actually be reading about me and my life. It's a little intimidating. There are so many wonderful blogs out there and so many friends with beautiful and funny and inspiring blogs that I'm intimidated. I'm just little old me...nothing fancy, nothing inspiring, just me. In spite of all that, I just want my friends and family to be able to know what's going on in my life and something for me to remember the important and wonderful things of my life. So, no expectations. I have none about this being the most amazing blog ever, and you should have no expectations either. Let's just have fun, shall we?

As a side note, my background picture is one I took on the coast of Slovenia near Italy. I clearly have not figured this out yet...I want to make it so that it takes up the whole page. All I can do is make it as tile or so it's just one of the small tiles. Anyone?