new calling for jo

i got a calling on sunday in the singles ward! i'm the new ward service coordinator along with danielle kuhns! we are really excited for this calling together! basically we are in charge of planning service projects for every week of the semester! it's going to be really busy for us. but the plan is to take one fhe group at a time (one for every week) and do a service project with them!! the hard part will be planning and calling the organizations to set up times and dates that a big group can come and help! if you have any great ideas, feel free to let me know! thanks!

New Semester and New Year

well, todd and i have just started this next semester and we are excited. some of our classes will be really hard but some will be fun and easy (well, i guess just my flower arranging classes are fun, accounting really isn't!! :)) todd is working two jobs on campus and being a full-time student and i'm just being a full-time student. todd is a TA for one of his accounting teachers and also he has been promoted to the director of vision conference (a job he has had for awhile). todd was called in december to be the ward clerk in the 43rd ward in the 6th stake which is all single students. he is really good at being a clerk. he just had to get the whole ward's records requested except about 7 students who were in the ward last semester. and then he will have to record all of the callings they will all receive. in university wards, they bishopric really likes giving everyone a calling which is a lot of work. i don't have a calling yet but i hear they are working on it. but todd and i both still home and visit teach in our old married student ward because our records are still there.

with careful trickery and bribing my teacher with cookies, i was able to get into two classes without having the prerequisites needed so that i can graduate in december of this year. i will only get my associates but i'm just happy to be able to graduate with a degree. previously, i didn't think i would be able to graduate at all because todd needs an internship during the winter semester which is only when those classes are offered and we want to get the best, most prestigious internship we can for him.

we had a wonderful christmas break. a whole 3 1/2 weeks!! we spent time with each of our families and enjoyed every minute of it. we also got the chance to go to the humanitarian bowl hosted by bsu and we got to be in a skybox!! very cool! another cool thing we got to do was go tubing at a tubing hill in garden valley. i had a nasty wipeout but it was all worth it! we also made a sweet jump on the laney's yard and down their hill to go sledding on. i missed the jump everytime!! it was kinda embarassing! my grandparents on my dad's side were able to come up to idaho this year after christmas and spend some time with us since we weren't able to go down to utah this year because of my mom's back. which is a whole nother story...basically, she has a herniated disk which is putting pressure on her nerve and sending pain through to her leg and foot. she has been in pain for many months and has tried everything!! you name it, she's tried it! we are just waiting for a miracle now. however, we were able to play a fun, semi-made up game at the mall. it was a lot of fun!! we were able to go to my family's ward christmas party where my little brother and sister were in the play performed. we also got to go to cali's (todd's little sister) choir concert and tyler's band concert. we also had a good new year's eve. we went to red robin for cali's 17th birthday and barely stayed up for the ball drop! todd read harry potter 6 and we both read number 7, so we finally finished the series!! :)

i got to design a big arrangement for graduation in december, well, one of the venues. it was the biggest, most important arrangement i have made, thus far!

i also took a saturday class called wreath making and we made a wreath out of real pine from a christmas tree! this is getting long so i'll be done!

election day

today was the first time i had ever voted before, and the first time either of us voted for a president of the united states. todd was in the ctm when the last election happened. it was a very interesting experience and very different from the way i had seen it on tv like on mr. monk and the election. there was no booths with curtains or anything. i registered at our precinct and i went to the ladies at this table to get a ballot and they were talking about this sign that they had seen or wanted to put up that said "the polls are really busy today so if you are voting for obama, please come back tomorrow"! haha it was really funny. rexburg is very conservative...well, most of idaho is. todd and i watched the map on msnbc of the various states turning either red or blue. i kept refreshing the page to get the latest info since we don't have tv. it was cool to take advantage of my right to vote since i have had the chance to vote for over 2 years now. well, God bless America...we are going to need it. :)

we also met with henry j. eyring (president henry b. eyring's son) today for an interview. more will come when todd actually gets sustained! you'll just have to live with the suspense. ;)

me 'n dani

so while our husbands were gone huntin', we decided to just be girls for the weekend, not wives! :) i went over to their house last night and helped hand out candy. we watched roman holiday (which is such a cute funny movie! but i didn't like the ending!), and 3 episodes of psych. we went out to dinner at wingers and had a funny waiter named "seaweed" (from Hairspray) because that's who we was for halloween! :) we asked him if he could dance and he said "i can do anything you want me to do, baby" to danielle. it was really fun! we saw haley heiner there and she wasn't engaged yet...but she will be soon! :) there was a cool D.A.R.E set up with a firetruck outside of the REX and they were giving out candy to the little kids. it was neat.
we ate a lot of candy and had a grand ole time. danielle got up early to go to the temple with an old roommate who's going on a mission. i slept in. when they got back we went to IHOP in IF for breakfast with a bunch of danielle's old roommates/friends. it was fun and good. then danielle and i decided to go window shopping at the mall. it was a lot of fun and i was tempted to buy a few shoes, but i didn't. we did go into bath and body and put on some nice lotion and lipgloss and also into dillards and sprayed expensive perfume on. then we went to victoria's secret and put on our makeup for the day. we looked like divas/hookers. it was just all their sample stuff lying around. it was fun. we found some other fun stores to try some stuff on and take some sweet photos! :) we came back to rexburg and discovered the color swap feature on my camera and swapped colors out for other colors! it was a blast! we made some really fond memories!
hopefully our boys come home with an elk...if not, that's ok. that just means we can have another girls night/day! :)

new background and layout!

i just changed our blog layout and background and i took out the kissy picture because joal complained! haha anyway...i hope you enjoy this new look. todd just left with brandon kuhns to go elk hunting for the first time this season. the season opens tomorrow and they will be ready and waiting! if they get one this trip, they will stay home for the rest of the season, but then danielle and i won't get to have fun being girls together! i'm going over there right now to have a sleepover and help her hand out candy! happy halloween!!!