Home Sweet Home

Ever since thanksgiving... I cant help but think, and count down every day/hour till we go home. We are SOOO excited. It has been a year since we have been home, and since i(Kilie) has seen any of my family. Not to mention we are looking forward to the time off school, and work. Even though we live in paradise, life does get pretty busy. haha. The day of Thanksgiving poor Pandora has been playing its Christmas playlist for our house, pretty much all day every day. What can i say, it makes me feel at home, in our little home away from home. Last night we recieved the best package in the mail with some Christmas decorations and an adorable little Nativity scene.(Thanks Mom and Dad Rainey)Christmas isnt Christmas without a Nativity at my house, i think there is one in every room. We couldnt help it, the decorations went up instantly. :) Even though our tree(we found) is microscopic, its perfect for us. Anyways...

Some things we are looking forward to..

1. smells of being home
2. just being in Arizona(change of scenery and weather)
3. playing in the snow
4. being with ALL of the family on both sides. It looks like we are really going to get to see everyone we want to. :)
5. Danny's homecoming
6. Seeing our siblings. we are pretty close to all of them.
7. Girls nights/ guys night out
8. Food(home cookin, and eatin out)
9. LOVEEEE and the Spirit of family and home
10. Temple lights
11. Hot Chocolate (QT trips)
12. Friends
13. Santa Clause
14. Watching Elf, and curling up on the couch
15. the initial shock of seeing familiar faces at the airport :)
16. being in a familiar area with familiar people and smells and places
17. Giving everyone a hard time(we are both pretty good at that;))
18. family temple work
19. celebrating our Anniversary


- the list could go on forever, literally. My point is... WE CANTTT WAIT!!! Only...20 more days until we get on a plane!

What we are not looking forward to...

1. convincing everyone i am not pregnant nor will i be anytime soon.
2. getting on a plane to come BACK to paradise and to school and work
3. leaving HOME-family-friends
4. crying alot(thats me) yep...i already cry when i think about going there, how am i supposed to feel when i have to come back here??
5. coming back to a changed ward( time, bishopric, people, etc..)
6. getting back into new routines for semester
7. not coming back to a few familiar faces, who are done with thier time on the island.
8. taking down christmas decorations :(

-I will stop there! this list is supposed to be alot shorter than the other to prove my point! hehehe... just kidding! ... I(Kilie) just dont deal well with change, and never have. So i guess there is always something to learn. Maybe ill work on that...or maybe i wont. Its ok to miss home right? homesickness is perfectly healthy when you live on an island! right?

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

AHHHH!! ITS HERE!!!! let us all FEAST!
hope you enjoy your day. just wanted to tell you all i LOVE you and im Grateful for you!

one time the wife said....

" Husband, you are not festive enough, will you please let me decorate??"
Husband then replies to wife...
Not this time, its just not in the budget this paycheck.
Wife gets sad..hoping for a festive holiday season.
Husband then comes home from wal-mart last night with the above decorations.. all for $3. Better late than never.
Now tell me.. was that in the budget???

And thats how its done!!! .. ps.. I am really grateful for this husband! He really does go out of his way to make me feel special, and like i am at home. :) Love him! .. and now we have a wonderful centerpiece for Thanksgiving tomorrow!!! yes.. TOMORROW!!

Blog Make-Over

Since i wont really be decorating my house because we are going home for the holidays... i thought i would do up our blog! I need the holiday spirit a little bit! Its kind of hard to feel it here! Cant wait to be home celebrating this wonderful time of year with our families!!!!

Sunshine

After hearing about alot of recent snow storms and many friends/family who are freezing thier butts off..today i have become very grateful to live in this wonderful paradise of SUNSHINE year round! I do not miss being cold!!

Dedication

We had a wonderful weekend! Call me a stalker, but we pretty much followed the Prophet everywhere. Friday night : Night show! Saturday night: Cultural Celebration! Sunday: Temple Dedication. I cant really describe the feeling but being in the presence of the Prophet of God is unreal. He is such a powerful man, and you can feel his power radiate!

The rare occasion of attending this temple dedication is something i will never forget. It was so spiritual and very exciting in the event that the temple will now be OPEN!!! Temple work, Here we COME!!!!! :)

Character

Lately... my life consists of NOOOOOO MOTIVATION! i dont think i have done homework in almost a month. I have been scrambling like crazy i feel like just to get things done. haha. why? I dont know! Anyways.. for class the other day i had to read this talk... The Transforming Power of Faith and Character by Elder Richard G. Scott
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and i thought... ok... Its time to get motivated. :) And this week has progressively gotten better. :) ... These good ol men know what they are talking about! It was just what i needed. A little something to pick me up and help me get through the rest of the semester. I wasnt just lacking in the homework department either.. the little spiritual things needed some attending to also! Read this talk, and enjoy!! :)

Elder Eyring

This man became an instant favorite to us this last weekend! All weekend, he was ALLL smiles and very happy to be here and his enthusiasm showed as he was able to shake many members hands, including ours...TWICE! Both times, he initiated the shake as well and looked us in the eye with a smile! .. He has aged quite a bit, but because of his example and his fun personality we became partial to this man. Thank you Elder Eyring for shaking our hands, and for having so much fun in Laie. We are glad you could join President Monson for the dedication.

Puppy Chow

Ever had this stuff?? is a favorite past time of mine! Literally every christmas you could find it at our house! .. im pretty sure its my parents favorite treat too. but.. I love it. Needless to say.. some ended up at my house the other night thanks to Taylor and Brad making it!! and... it was one of those moments like egg nog! Teleported home instantly. only instead.. i just really wished i was home. haha. Soon. yes. Soon. sorry blog readers... its just that around this time of year..island fever is extremly present in our home!

On the flip side.. Im super excited for Thanksgiving Break. Time off, and a feast. What more do you need? This year..is the first year..I will be having at least some sort of contribution to the feast! Pretty excited for our first Thanksgiving Married!

The Sabbath Day

I miss my ward. I havent been to church in 4 weeks. :(.. due to what we call RESPONSIBILITY.. and WORRK. :(... I do however while i am at work read conference talks and listen to church music. it is kind of a missionary moment for me because people always come into my office like what the heck? and then i get to explain to them! :) so clever.. anyways.. its just not the same as sitting through church meetings. i miss my husbands back rubs, and testimonies, and feeling the spirit, and taking the sacrament. Only 4 more weeks and i wont have to work sundays anymore at all hopefully. :)

Every Member a Missionary

"You will not convert everyone in your lifetime, but every missionary has a duty to make someones life better. You may not bring them into the gospel, but you can make thier lives BETTER somehow, someway!" -Conference October 2010


This week... Huston and i were able to have the coolest experience. Ill start by telling you a little bit of background. Our ward had 2 goals with the upcoming opening of the Laie temple. Those two goals were to find at least 4 family names to do the work for, and to invite someone who is less active or a non-member to see the Temple open house. Who in this small town of Laie, is not a member? pretty much... NO ONE!.. I wont lie, it is very much a small mormon town with the BYU and the Temple

. .. Anyways.. i have a few co workers i had worked up enough courage to invite, and i posted the flyers at work also in case anyone wanted to go, because i actually work with quite a few non-members..and i had NO luck. NONE. i asked 2 co workers to go, and no one was interested. One co worker in particular, i asked about 5 times, and every time, the answer ended up being no. . So i started thinking to myself.. Who will want to come see the inside of this beautiful place? because it really is not often that the temple is open to the public.

I have a good friend from HS that moved here with her husband(ARMY) a few months ago. and i thought.. hmm.. ill try. but at this point with no luck, im not feeling too positive about it. but hey what the heck ill go for it anyways... So i emailed her a nice note asking her to come over to our side of town to see the temple. Much to my suprise her response was, "WE WOULD LOVE TO COME!"

so, we set up a date and time, and sure enough.. they came to see the open house. and...they had soo many questions, and were so open minded and really loved the temple.We were able to talk with them about the church and clear up alot of thier weird assumptions, and after it was clear..you could tell they were thinking.. "o, mormons arent so bad after all;)" My heart is so full. and i am so grateful for that experience. Thank you HF for not letting me give up. and for blessing us with this experience.

**on a side note, the "F" word is said alot in my friends husbands language, and the whole night we were hanging out with them, the word FREAKING came out of his mouth instead, and it made us feel good and respected.

BE AN EXAMPLE of the BELIEVERS in CHRIST! and remember EVERY MEMBER A MISSIONARY!

Egg Nog

We are starting early this year... haha.. apparently my husband has a love for egg nog i never knew about... so we have already baught some this year..a little early dont ya think?. which is weird, because he wont let me decorate hardly at all for the holidays(mostly cuz we could use that money on other things), or listen to Christmas music yet, or watch Elf..but he will DRINK EGG NOG??? whats with that? ... anyways we had our first swigg last night, and it made me SICK... yes... SICK, as in like HOME SICK. the kind of homesick that makes you want to crawl up in a ball and cry ALOT because you miss home so much. The people around you at home, the smells, the smiles, the family, the bed, the house, the decorations, the weather(winter preferablly), the friends, the neighbors, the dinners,... well you get my drift. I miss home and Egg Nog almost took me there, it was almost as if i teleported.!.. Only 4 more weeks, and some days!!!... one time i thought this post would be about egg nog?.. and it wasnt. Sorry readers.

Perfection...

our eggplant the garden neighbor planted for us! :)


The Fence is finally up!!

Our First attempt on the ANTS!! They can ALL DIE!!! Am i mad? .. a little! lol
-

We are a bit Proud! :)


when we first started our garden and i uploaded that photo that i said was going to be our goal.... well i would say we are getting pretty close dont ya think??... Today, the fence went up! :) yahoo! and we are coming back after the ant attack stronger than ever. We recently planted some papaya trees, okra, basil, parsley, some more onions, and more carrots, oh and we replanted our squash and zuccinni! ... We are trying our first ANT attack too. :) we know it wont kill our plants, however we are just wandering if it will be effective! :) anyways.. Enjoy the photos of the Garden! we might be a little more proud than we should be;)

Good News...

I get to keep my job. Yep.. small update. about 5 months ago, i put in for time off to go home for christmas. It was not granted to me, yet my lovely parentals had already "mortgaged the farm" in order for us to come home, sooo... i told them i would put in my two weeks before i went home and that would be that. Well, about three weeks ago i decided to mention it to my boss again, asking him if there was anything he could do for me... and well.. he was really sweet and said, well Kilie, we would really love to have you stay. Do you think that you could pick up an extra day? If you can pick up an extra day, we will give you your time off and you can go home! :) ... WHAT??? Thanks LARRY!! ..currently favorite boss in the world. ... So, next semester i will be working 5 days a week, and no sundays. what could get any better than that??.. And the best part is.. my work schedule works really well with school, etc..... so.. the VERY BEST PART IS...... WE ARE COMING HOME!!!!!!!! ... o, and i suppose keeping the job will help us out alot too;) ..Thank you Heavenly Father for always blessing us with exactly what we need to make it work out here. Someday ill figure out why you wanted us here so bad!!

When your supposed to do Homework....

This is what happens.... :)... I got a little bored, and creative and laminated our seed labels for the garden..and made us a cute little sign!! :) .. someday.. the garden will have a fence around it. Today we planted more seeds, and we cant wait for them to start showing up. Suddenly, an eggplant sprout showed up in our garden too.. our little garden neighbor was sweet and planted it for us because we had to pull out all of our squash and zuccini!

Romance Anyone?...

the other night... we decided we needed some quality time together since we have both been pretty busy...so we just simply packed up some foil dinners(aka.hobo dinners), made a fire on the beach, and star gazed after dinner. It was such a beautiful night, and suprisingly the sky was pretty clear. We saw about 3 shooting stars and made shapes out of the small clouds we could still see. It was beautiful and relaxing! :) I loved it! It was fun for me because i felt like we were dating again, and i was like a giddy little girl with her new boyfriend. .. yep, the man still gives me butterflies! I love him.

Garden Troubles....

It is what it is... i was unable to take pictures. but today we went to weed our garden and we only found every single one of our squash and zucchini plants were infested with ants and wilted over and dying. and when i say infested..I mean..more ants than you have ever seen in your life. Two full rows of these babies. Almost like the whole population of the united states gathering in one place. Anyways, we were sad because the plants were beginning to even have actual vegetables finally...and it had to get infested by the "plague of ants." It was very sad, but we are not giving up. Everything else seems fine. Our peppers, carrots, and green onions are coming in great. We are going to re-plant some squash, and then plant a few other new things in our garden, now that we have more space. Wish us better luck next time. :( It was very sad. we were not thrilled about it. But it is kind of fun for new beginnings. Wal-Mart here we come. We will conquer the ants. WE WILL!!!

Is there Sunshine in your soul today?

alrighty... Welll... as far as sunshine goes.. this morning it was GONE. I accidentally slept on the couch last night ( if you dont know me, i am kind of a needy person, and i hate not sleeping next to Huston..so..not a good nights rest) and woke up to homework early this morning. and it decided to rain on me as i walk out the door to start my real day. then, i couldnt unlock my bike because the lock was stuck..and I was already late for class..in which i had to do a presentation. it got time for me to present..and well.. powerpoint decides it wont work. so... i didnt get to present. and i was flustered and running around like a chicken with my head cut off. My teacher was thankfully understanding and decided to give me till wednesday. does that sound like sunshine to you?? to me, that sounds more like when it RAINS IT POURS!!!

But, it gets better. :) Heavenly father sure knows his daughter well. And he knows i have needs. He then allows me to run into a friend i havent talked to in over a month, and it made me smile alot...after that i was able to allow myself a few minutes of meditation to slow my mind down and relax, before class starts. Religion. My favorite hymn is playing as i walk in the class "i know that my redeemer lives" and i could feel my heart begin to break down its wall. I was humbled. Because then, right then and there, i looked down in my planner ... only to see that We had our temple open house appointment today. I cant have an attitude like this in the temple. So i was able to mentally prepare a little bit before we had to enter into the temple. it is Beautiful by the way. I cannot wait to do my second official temple session. This is where i know that Heavenly father knows his children... because he knew i needed something to lift me up. He knew that i needed to feel the spirit somehow or i would have allowed myself to be grumpy alll day! .. these things sound so little, but the only thing i can think of is that Heavenly father was watching me from above thinking, how can i help her? ...and just the thought of that give me sunshine in my soul! :) So, i will ask again...Is there sunshine in your soul today???? ... Radiate it to others, like it was radiated to me!

Halloween Festivities!

This year was really fun for Halloween. I have not really been in the holiday mode because there are no seasons really in paradise, but the weather has cooled down quite a bit in order for it to feel a little bit like fall. I appreciate that. Alot. Anyways.. this year consisted of Friday night was babysitting(which was really fun, we love to play with kids.) Volleyball game and scary movie. Saturday night was Huston's work party, which we both dressed up. Same as last year. shhhh, dont tell. :) but it worked out for us. anyways.. then we ended up heading to the volleyball game again, but this time.. IN OUR COSTUMES! very fun! However, i am finding that the older we get, the more people gives us looks of death and you know they are thinking... " GROW UP, HOW OLD ARE YOU?" and my response would be to that..... where is your festive Holiday spirit. I hope we dress up every year, even if we are just passing out candy. Anyways.. after the game we tried to compile a "traditional" halloween. A few friends joined us with their favorite traditions, like bobbing for apples, carmel dip (since we didnt now how to do carmel apples), pumpkin bread, the donut game(very entertaining) and scary stories of course! It ended up being a wonderful Halloween! Then on Sunday, we carved Watermelons. Foodland was out of pumpkins, so we decided to go with watermelons instead! Our friends watermelon was epic, and ours was fun to do! :) After that we celebrated with the ward at the ward Potluck. It was really fun. We do love our ward. Anyways... for being far from home and coming from someone who doesnt deal well with change, we had a wonderful Halloween together! Our first Halloween Married! :)