Royalty and Romance (Part 1)

So Emily and I had the privilege to be given a great gift by Laurel and Mosiah (Emily's Sister and Brother-in-law). A While back they went to a course called Royalty and Romance, which was put on by Kirk and Kim Duncan. And they came back from it just raving about how good it was and they tried to explain some of the stuff that they learned but it went over our heads. So they decided to just pay for us to go and so we were signed up to go in early June.

So june comes around and we arrange to go and we get there and I am very skeptical about what the seminar is going "teach" me. This is a three day seminar and by the lunch break of day one I was already hooked. If I had the money I would totally be in doing all of their seminars. They opened up things in my mind and made me think about things that I never would have even had the slightest thought about.

The have a company called 3 key elements and this one that we went to was geared especially for couples.

They start out by telling their story and how they got to where they are today and then they hand out these small sheets of paper that have something written on the back. Then when they tell us we turn them over and begin reading what is written after which they immediately ask to have everyone who has a paper with three "F's" on it go to one corner and then those with 4 "F's" to go to another corner, and so on up to 6 "F's." then they ask one person from each group to read their paper. This is what the paper reads...

"Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of many years." 

Needless to say a majority of the people went to the corner with the 3 "F's" when in fact there are 6. Which he compared to how most of us don't see everything that is there right in front of our eyes. 

I will relay more in my next post.

Father's Day

Today is Father's Day and I am so happy because I received one of the most wonderful gifts ever. My wife took the time to take my daughter and have her paint a piece of paper with finger paint that said "Happy Father's Day" (I will show it below.)

The other thing that Emily had for me for Father's Day, she actually has been giving me over the last three days. It is a clean and organized house. I am so much of an organizational guru that I think I should help others with it. Anyway,  over the last three days she has been working with me to clean out and declutter all of the rooms in the upstairs part of our house. It has been so amazing to see how much junk that we are just holding onto for no reason. Or even clothes that don't fit anymore or clothes that I've had for nearly ten years.

And what is more interesting is that Emily now agrees with my philosophy about keeping a clean and organized house. Of course this doesn't mean that we still don't have messes; we live like any other family in our house. it just means that we are more conscience of the messes that we make and we take the time each day to clean them up.

Doing this has made such a difference in the way our home has felt as well. For those of you who know Emily this didn't come lightly to her. We have been making some other major changes as well which i will put into my next post, but just as a snippet we attended a conference at the south towne expo center that has changed the way we think about our relationship and about ourselves. (Worth every penny)

Tutoring

Math tutor and homework helper (2nd - 12th Grade)

I am now available for tutoring. If you know of anyone who needs a tutor please refer them to me. Just click the link above.

Our little girl growing up!

So our little girl was born on May 23rd and has been a great addition to our family. She has been a happy little bundle of joy and is now starting to jibber and jabber at us. Just before Christmas she finally said "dada". It was the best Christmas present ever.
One other big thing since the last time I posted is that I am now in college studying secondary education with a math emphasis. I am hoping to be able to finish quickly and get a job somewhere where we can move and settle down. 

Lydia just had her first birthday. She was so excited to have all of her cousins over. She really loves playing with them and laughing at whatever they are doing. She has such a cute personality and some infectiously cute laughter. 

As a side note Emily had her feet worked on but I will tell you all about that in the next post.

Ready, Set, Nest!

I never understood until recently what "nesting" really meant or why people did it but now I think that I finally understand. For the last week or so I have had this unreal feeling like I need to have every little thing in my home clean and in place for no apparent reason. After getting the main part of the house clean I thought that the feeling might go away but then it got even worse when I realized that it probably wouldn't stop. I have been cleaning and organizing like a mad man for the last week, and now since it is getting warm outside it has shifted to getting the yard looking good and having things ready for the baby.

Whenever I think about being a dad or having a baby of my own I start to have this overwhelming feeling of excitement and nervousness at the same time. On one hand I want the baby to be here and to see her face but on the other I am so nervous because I have no idea of how to take care of a baby. I have so many things that I want to make sure I do as a father and so many things that I don't want to mess up. I just hope that she loves me as much as I already love her.

Emily has been a real trooper with all of her emotions going completely haywire. We have a few arguments over stupid things but all in all things are going well. I love her so much and I am so glad that she is as excited as I am to have her in our lives. She is already such a blessing and we know that she is our little miracle in our lives. We know things might get hard but we will do whatever we have to do to provide for her. (even get up at 3:15 AM to go to work)

A name ... We finally chose a name!

So Emily is now 7 Months Pregnant and she is as miserable as ever but still going strong. We have been working on the nursery and getting it ready though there is not a lot in it right now.

For months now since we found out it was a girl we have been trying to come up with a name for her and we just couldn't come to any conclusion or final name to call her but we finally decided that the name we are going to give to her is "LYDIA GRACE JONES". Emily has actually had that name pick out for a number of years but as we talked about other names she couldn't just decide. I really love the name and am glad that it is not a common name right now. Also we are very excited because one of our friends that we play games with is also having a girl and hopefully they will become good friends.

Well, as I promised I have Photos from the ultrasounds. I hope you enjoy them as much as we are.

Lydia Grace Jones - 29 Weeks - 3D View

Lydia Grace Jones - 29 Weeks - Profile View

Lydia Grace Jones - Heartbeat (139 BPM) - 29 Weeks

I Got Screwed!

So a few days ago we took our car into get fixed because the brakes were being really loose and the guy at the shop said that the master cylinder needed to be replaced. So we had them do it and they then called back and said that it wasn't working still and said that the ABS unit might be out and that it would cost over $1000 for a new one. So we decided that we couldn't afford that and called Emily's dad to come and look at the car to see if he could see what was wrong with it. So they came down a today and he looked at it and decided that all we needed to was bleed the brakes and change the calipers and brake shoes. From his years of working on cars he determined that if they were doing it properly they would have to bleed the brakes. But when he looked at the brake calipers they were all rusted and they had not ever been bled. After he told me this I was so pissed.

So to clarify ... the brakes had not been checked and this guy at the auto shop took us for $270. Even though he did change out the master cylinder he didn't follow any of the procedures that would be necessary for a proper brake check. So tomorrow I am going to go back to the shop and ask him a bunch of questions about what he actually did, and if I find that he is lying to me I may have to file a complaint with the BBB and possibly file a suit against him for fraud.

Dishonesty is running rampant in the business world. Especially in the automotive industry. If you can find an honest person in the world who won't take you for everything you've got then make sure you make friends with them because they will save you a ton of time and money. An even better idea is to learn how to do it yourself and save the cost of labor for a mechanic (Of course this only work if the repair is simple like repairing brakes or brake pads.) I really learned a lot from this and even more from my father-in-law.

Winter finally arrives! ... Sort of

So this morning I woke up to find that despite what I had seen in the news there was about a half an inch of snow on the ground. We had a totally dry Christmas so it is nice to actually see some of the white stuff on the ground. I always am a bit disappointed when we have Christmas without any snow but I guess it is better late than never. hopefully we will get a bit more as the days go on because otherwise we may have a very dry year.

On another note ... I am glad that it has been dry a bit longer because it has allowed me to do a few extra things around the yard before it got too cold. I can't wait for spring now because I will be able to plant and have a garden like I have wanted for some time now. I don't know if anyone else feels like this, but once Christmas is over it seems like it should get warm and be going into springtime. But we still have just over 2 months before it gets warm again according to the calendar. We shall see who is right.

One final note: Baby is growing well and Emily and I are literally "gearing up" for her arrival. We have done most of our baby registry at Babies R Us and we hope that we can also get lots of hand-me-downs from siblings, friends, family, and anyone who has girly baby stuff that they want to get rid of.

A Baby? ... A BABY GIRL!

Okay ... for those who don't follow my life on facebook that much or who aren't in my immediate family, you probably haven't heard that Emily and I found out that we are going to have a girl in may. We are so excited and everyone we know has asked us if we know for sure that it is a girl. Well ... we have been into our doctor for our official ultrasound (20 week mark) and also we are participating in a first time pregnancy study at the hospital that gets us 3 extra ultrasounds over the course of the pregnancy, and to top it all off when Emily hit her 15 week mark we went to a commercial ultrasound place to get the gender then as well. So needless to say it has been checked 4 times since the 15 week mark. We do have a few names picked out but not quite sure which one we are going to use until we see her.

In the next few days I am going to scan and put some of the ultra sound pictures up on this blog for all of you to see.

Emily and I had such a great Christmas this year. We didn't have much to spend on each other but we did get quite a few baby things from parents and friends. We are so grateful that everything is going well in Emily's pregnancy. Hopefully everything will continue to well and everything will run smoothly and normally. 

My new years resolution... Keep my wife healthy and happy!

Hello McFly!!!

In Back to the Future the main character Marty McFly is tormented and taunted by Biff Tannen. And when Marty or one of the other versions of a McFly character are around Biff; Biff will come up to him and say, "Hello, McFly!" and knock on his head like a door. This image now has become an iconic move to denote stupidity or that the person being knocked on is somehow less intelligent.

Well I have been having this image totally running though my head today as several people in my training class asked questions or made comments that were.... well..... totally a "McFly" moment. And when I hear them say these things I just want to go up to them and knock on their head and say "Hello, McFly!" or "Wake Up, McFly!" Our class seems to be weeding itself into two groups. First is the group of people that are totally understanding and can pick up on everything and are going to make great reps and then the other is the group that are struggling to grasp even the most simple of concepts and are taking most of the trainers time.

Emily is going to start her training again on Tuesday and I'm sure that she will probably be saying the same things to me when she gets to the same point. I have to take my second assessment test tomorrow. Hopefully I won't make the same silly mistakes I made on the last one. (Which I actually got a 90% on, which isn't to bad.) With a little luck and a lot of understanding hopefully I can ace this one.

Early to Bed and Early to Rise Makes ....

... A Good Boy Healthy, Wealthy and Wise. Or at least that's how I think it goes. I'm learning that as my body adjusts to this new schedule of getting up at 4:30 in the morning to get ready for work that I now seem to have more energy and I feel like I accomplish more even though I have the same amount of time each day.

This job is very exciting to learn all of the new things that Verizon Wireless does and how they really treat their customers. I have never seen a company with so much focus on the customer care and the importance of the customers feelings as much as I have with this job. Everything is centered around the customers experience and helping the customer get the exact service they need even if that means reducing their plan to a cheaper one. They also have great express service options that allow customers to do almost everything one their own without the help of a customer care representative. I am glad that as a customer care representative I can be honest and open with customers and tell them that we are here to help them get the best service that Verizon Wireless can provide. From the exceptional coverage to the great plans and phones, they have truly cornered the market on helping customers and making sure that each one of them is taken care of. I just hope that I can learn everything well enough so that I can help a lot of people become promotional customers for Verizon Wireless.

As you can see I am very excited and now it is actually time for bed (8:45 pm) so that I can be up again and learn more tomorrow at training.

What to Expect When Your (Wife is) Expecting

So I've been reading the "What to Expect When Your Expecting" book and I have to say that you could pretty much some up the book in one simple statement. "Expect Everything!" Every single month there is something different. There are constant mood swings, cravings, morning sickness, body changes, and many other things that I will not go into right now. In the book there is a section or the "dads" to read but it is so short and only has a few help and tips. I feel like I'm in the dark on a lot of this and I really don't know what to do sometimes. I worry so much when Emily says that she is hurting or emotional or when she says, "I feel fat". I worry that I will say or do the wrong thing or that I am not supportive enough. There are so many things that I wish there was a manual for the husbands to follow to help us get through the pregnancy. I'm so glad that we are having a baby but sometimes I just wish that the woman having the baby would stay more level headed.

I love my wife and she is being such a trooper about her morning sickness and I love her for being understanding when I need to have some time to just relax or even be by myself. May 16th will not come soon enough.

Keeping Training Along

So today was the 2nd day of my training at ACS and I am already a bit bored with my training. Not because I am not interested in the material but more because we have 50+ people in our class and we have to wait for everyone to be at the same place and to keep up and I usually can do whatever our trainer says in about 5 seconds and the rest of the class takes about 1 or 2 minutes or even more to do the same thing. So I always have to just sit and wait for them to catch up and I get terribly bored. I really worry for the other people because the production floor will probably eat them alive. I just want to learn quickly in a professional space where the people are just as professional.

There is so much I want to learn and it can't come fast enough. BRING IT ON! 

Keep Training Along!

The End and a New Start

So today is a big day for me. Today marks the end of an "era" at my work for IDS (Wayne Jones Co.) I think that working for your family is a great thing for some people but you have to have just the right relationship to do that and I just don't think I was one of those people. I honestly love what I do but the dynamics of working with family is very hard and I just don't think is was the right thing for me.

Tomorrow I will start work at ACS in North Salt Lake doing inbound calling for Verizon Wireless as a customer care representative. They actually are still hiring too. So if you are looking for a good job this would be a great place. We get great benefits and discounts on a ton of stuff including discounts on apple products.

There is also some great news that I haven't shared with you but you may already know. My Wife, Emily is pregnant with our first child and she is due on May 16th 2012. I am so excited and terrified. I have wanted to be a daddy for so long but the timing was just never right for having one until now. We will find out around Thanksgiving time what the sex of the baby is. We are both hoping for a girl.

Emily has been such a trooper with the morning sickness and having to get up early in the morning to go to her job. Sometimes it is really hard and I wish so much that I could just do it for her but I just have to be here for her and let her cry on my shoulder when she needs it. I hope that she is just as excited as I am. I love her so much and she has been such and inspiration to me and I hope that she knows how much I love her.

Temporary Lapse in Desire

To all those who have been reading my blog I appologize for not keeping up on it lately. Some things in my life have become very complicated and this blog has not been the biggest priority. However I have worked throughh some issues and found some porper compromise and hopefully this blog will become a more regular occurance than just every few months. My plan is to be able to have a few words of wisdom each week or even twice a week if time permits. With all this technogoly you might think that we would have more time but it seems that no matter how much time we can find in a day, we will always seem to fill it up with more and more stuff.

So now on to what I really want to talk about. I was sitting here this morning listening to a conference talk on the church's website (lds.org) and I chose it totally at random just because I liked the voice of the speaker (Elder Oaks) and his talk was on desire and the desires of our hearts. It touched my heart in a way that I have not feflt in a long time. It really made me think about where I have been putting the priorities in my life. In the past I have always justified my desire to go and work with the reason that I am "bringing home the bacon" for my wife and family. But in actuality I must be honest and say that go to work more for rmyself because, one, I love what I do for work; and two, that sometimes I need some space to sit and think about all the things that are going on in my life. I'm not saying that I don't love my wife or want to be with her every moment of every day but more that I just sometimes need to have some time to sit and reflect and make good decisions.

So now over my desk at work I have this priority list in a target like image. Starting at the center (bullseye) is GOD and then going outward are the labels: Wife, Family, Work, Education and Fun (respectively) and over the target are the words "Where does it fit in your priorites?" It has been an enormous help and getting thing back into perspective has opened my eyes to all of the more important things that I have/or have not been doing.

The Cowardly Lion of my Mind

One of the many things that I struggle with is the realtionship with my family. To make a very long story short, they just don't seem to trust me and though I am not the most perfect person they still don't give me the trust I think I deserve. Also for some reason I don't have the best relationship with my father. To be totally honest, it is like he is afraid to have a relationship with me; and although he is the owner of the company that I work for, the things that we talk about at work do not count as a personal conversation. Yes, I have made many attempts to try and make a connection with him, but it is like there is nothing there for him to be interested in. I try to talk about business and ask him questions but then we just end up talking about work and how I can be better or how I need to learn more and improve myself. All I really want is for him to ask me how I am and be interested in what I do. Even if he isn't interested, the effort makes all the difference in the world. Sometimes I think he is affraid that I will dislike him for being honest about not liking what I am interested in. When in reality I would rather have him tell me that he doesn't like or is ignorant about any of the things that I do then let me go on thinking that he just isn't interested in me. I try so hard to go out there and do what I can but the cowardly lion of my mind just gets eaten by the fear of rejection and it runs and hides for while until it can poke its head out again.

It's a jungle in here!

To most, the mind is a safe haven of peace and tranquility where one can find solace and inner meaning about life. Well, NOT FOR ME! Its seems that my mind is a ravenous jungle in which there are many dangerous creatures all competing for space on the stage of my mind. They don't politely take there turn or wait in an orderly line. No! It is everyone for himself and there is a constant strain to be the "king of the hill" as it were.

From Family Life, Finances, and personal relationships, to anything that I have ever wanted to do with my life; they all seem to want my full attention. Even sometimes in my sleep they are still on stage dancing around yelling there ideas and there demands into my head; and every once in a while I can satisfy one or two of them and things seem to calm down. But inevitably, they always come back for more and want there new demands met.

So over the next few blog entries I am going to write more about these dangerous and sometimes bossy creatures in my mind. I will also talk about the ones that  I want to give more attention to but seem to be easily knocked around by the more vicious of the animals in my mind.

Is it a YOYO night for dinner?

Before I was married to Emily I had no idea what a YOYO night was and it honestly sounded very strange. I had to try and think about how you would eat a yo-yo. Well if you haven't guessed yet YOYO is an acronym for "Your on your own". Meaning that you have to make it yourself and clean up after yourself. Its now kind of fun to fake out my friends at school and tell them we had "YOYO" for dinner.

Usually when we do have a YOYO night I end up making something very simple and quick; that is becuase mainly I am a guy and we don't like to wait for our food. But it is also becuase I don't know how to cook food unless it comes out of a box. So needless to say that Mac & Cheese is always an option. So every once in a while give yourself a break and make it a YOYO night.

Cut me a break

I have been having a really hard week and it seems like it has beeen just one thing after another. And to top it all off last night I couldn't find my homework at home anywhere so I thought I might have left it on my desk at work. So I decided to go to the office and check. Well we got there, no homework, just a dead-end and a wwaist of time so then we are driving back to our home and as we are approaching an intersection Emily's car just dies. No sputtering no growns or moans, just stops dead and we coast to a stop at the light. I try to restart the engine but it just won't stay started. (and no, it was not out of gas.)

Luckily for me Emily had her phone so we called AAA and got a tow truck to come and pick up the car, and my Dad came and took us home. So now we are without a car because my car is still not totally fixed or registered and her's is in the shop. And to top it all off I have no idea how we are suppose to pay for the repairs that will have to be made on the car.

Blonde or Brunette

So Saturdays tend to be very odd now-a-days with me attending UVU classes. What use to be a day of relaxing and catching up on laundry and just getting a few things done, is now a day where we go to school and try to spend a few minutes doing homework for the classes that I have due on monday. Well, today was even a bit different from that becuase Emily's mother and younger brother came down from Vernal to spend the day. Emily's plan was to take her mom to the student spa and do a treatment on her and then come back and hang out a bit before they had to leave to go home.

As is typical with her family they didn't arrive until almost 2:00 pm and they decided to go to lunch and then take and go to Sally's Beauty Supply store. Well, when they got back to the house Emily announced that they were going to bleach Emily's hair try to get her to be a blonde. So they began the process of bleach and proxide and color. Finally when 2:00 am rolled around Emily's hair had gone from a Dark Auburn Brown to an almost Orange hue.

By then they had to call it quits for the night but that is not where the story ends. In the morning Emily had her mom take her back to the Sally's to get more product so that they could even out the color and try to at least get it to a reasonable blonde shade. After another treatment of color and proxide were done she ended up as a medium blonde with alot of red undertones.

Though I am not to keen on blondes I think that I will eventually come to like the new color on her. I just hope that we son't have anymore overnight bleaching escapades.