The Keys

Its been a busy time and we just had a wonderful weekend! We went to the keys and relaxed, fished and I actually caught some things!! It was awesome! We love going to the keys and the lifestyle down there is very calm and relaxing. It is very nice! It has been a wonderful week and look forward to starting another week of work.. not really the work job, but I am now teaching 19 students and I LOVE teaching the students. It is nice to relax from time to time! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I will try to remember to put pictures up here another time. We also set up our Christmas tree and that was fun too! We have a train to go around the tree also.

ITS BEEN FOREVER~!

Steve speared this fish and a barracuda came up behind it and ate it!! This is what it looked like! This is when we were snorkeling. There is a picture of me, while we went to this river and tried fishing a little bit and of the water in the keys SO clear!!

I just noticed that the last time I wrote was for Valentines day of last year?!? How am I ever going to catch up everyone with what i am doing now? Well, we had a wonderful spring, and then our summer was even better! Steve and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary by going to a SAK which is a comedy club in town we just love and it is CLEAN kids can go and it is a wonderful family atmosphere. We also enjoyed just being together during the summer. Fourth of July we went to the Keys, we LOVE going to the keys we had a wonderful time with his friends who live down there which is free stay for us and we were able to kayak and that was free too, it was fun! We also went out on his friends BIG boat and went snorkeling! My first time ever!! Quite scary when you could see nurse sharks below you but way awesome!

After the summer.. Steve and I experience a little set back. The Arena is done for the magic stadium and the next job he could go to was either in Ocalla which is a good 100 miles from our home or Jacksonville which would be a good 2 hour or so drive from our house. So he could either take a lay-off or work one of these jobs. He is going to be working in Ocala which will be a harder drive for both of us to let him do but we will be alright. A little set back but workable.

Tinae has 2 jobs. Still working Pest Control which happened starting June of this year, a secretary. I now also have 20 students who are taking clarinet or piano from me.

It is General Conference weekend and looking forward to hearing from the speakers. Sorry for not catching you up earlier, at home we have TERRIBLE internet connection so I try to catch up when I come to the in-laws on everthing. There is the blurb real quick. Some pictures attached.

Memorial weekend as such

It is now Memorial weekend. It has been a wonderful weekend and rained almost every weekend which is wonderful :) I have enjoyed having the time with family. We are having a wonderful time and getting caught up on all types of things. Steve and I spent the weekend with his parents. They live in the Villages, a retirement section of Florida and about 70 miles away, not too far away.

I love having the mother and father in law I have. We have a wonderufl time and they are easy to love and so willing to love me. We got together with his sister and her husband and 2 kids. They are all so cute! Our niece, Elisabeth, she got real excited for icecream that she got into her booster and was walking around with it on her bum. It was really cute :)

Hope you are all having a wonderful Memorial weekend.

Thanks for all my catching up and your patience. I will try to do better. I do not have internet and can catch up when I have a chance to get an internet. So we are doing wonderful over here, look forward to this summer. Steve is working very hard. I have 9 students right now and working hard with the kids I have. I love teaching and also teach in Primary as the music leader. Steve is the E. quorum secretary and keeping busy with that and work, also taking a class this summer in our community college near by. We are grateful for all of our blessings and thanks for taking this trip with us. Enjoy the rest of the pictures and are very grateful for all who read this. If you haven't read for awhile I hope you will read.

Garden and Yard

Okay so wonder what I am doing at home. I have a dog and teach piano and clarinet. Well we have this HUGE yard and have a beautiful garden out back to take care of. Also the pots on the front porch have herbs in them, a strawberry plant and other things that wanted to try growing also. these are pictures of some flowers too and they are so pretty in our front yard, also the grass is growing which you can see a difference from the ugly brown in February.

SHANELL HOME!!

My sister has been on a mission for the last 18months! She came home May 14, 2010. She served in the philippines, it was great to see her in the airport and her get super excited and start speaking in Tagolog, I am grateful for her example of going on a mission she is an example to the siblings in our family! I am glad she had a chance to serve the Lord for 18 months! She had a wonderful time. My favorite thing she said about out there is this: "The people have nothing and are so happy." What a wonderful thing to hear that, why can't we be more like that in America? Instead we all want more, why?

These are pictures of Shanell on her mission.

Beach Fun in May

Okay so now we are catching this up a little more! Steve and I decided at the beginning of may that we were going to go to the Beach, it was quite a random idea but the best we did that week :) We had a wonderful time at the beach, only about an hour there but it was worth it, a wonderful place to relax. I didn't take my camera to the beach itself with us, but did get some pictures on the way there and back.

Random pictures

Okay some pictures that we have taken in the last little bit :) We love our dog Snap and he gets a lot of pictures with us and then some pictures of Steve :) I just love our new camera and so I like to take pictures with it :)

PIANO

We had the chance to find a digital Roland piano for a wonderful price, we got it used from a guy whose wife passed away. A wonderful man, he also had a good box full plus some more books and it came with the piano, it had its own bench and has a microphone for karoake stuff, you can hook into the piano. A wonderful opportunity for us and a blessing for Tinae, who needs it for teaching in her home. We are so grateful for all the blessings in our lives and grateful to have it is played often. :) a beautiful piano and the bookshelf off to the side of the piano, those are the books that came with it, well the top ones came with the piano.

Also, the First picture is of 2 beautiful display cases, and we got both of them for $40.00 at a garage sale. We are grateful again for all the wonderful ways we have been able to get what we need to hold our things in our house. These are just wonderful to have and a good price for such a wonderful item :)

attempt #3

Okay the pictures FINALLY worked and are up now from the last post I wrote!!

Enjoy!

Mother In Law's Bday

In March, we went to Steve's Parents house for his MOm's Birthday. We made a card for her out of candy bars. We also brought our dog with us to their house, and they have to jack russel's and by the end of the month they all got along very well :)

we had a wonderful weekend, it was really nice to spend time with them and to spend time with his Mom, well it was a week after her birthday, we came down for General Conference too, wonderful talks!!

More pictures of the house

Okay I forgot to add more pictures on the last post so here are more pictures of the house when we first moved in, other areas of the house, the different bedrooms, bathrooms, and our den room is the one with the TV and it is the one that Steve decorated, all doing with fish, and fishing etc. So enjoy the rest of these. We moved into the house in February right after Valentine's Day. We are grateful to have a good acre of land that we are in control of with all kinds of different fruit on the land too. A few to name: 2 Tangerine trees, 3 orange trees, lots of pecan trees, 1 Japanese tree, 2 mulberry trees, 1 lemon tree, 2 guava trees, a few plants of blackberries. We are grateful for the lady that lived here before and planted all the trees and it is wonderful :)

its been forever

Okay in a short amount that I can write this is what has happened in the last little bit of time. Steve and I were able to get our own place. We live in a 3/2 house with a beautiful amount of rooms. Here are some pictures of our house for you. We love our house, we have a beautiful garden out back, some pots on the front porch with herbs. We are loving it, we also have a dog named Snap now and we love him too. He is a mix of a couple of things, please feel free to leave what you think he is with us on a post :) Hope you are all having a wonderful time wherever you are, and we are doing well. Here are some pictures of our house, inside and out.

VALENTINE'S DAY and TRUE LOVE

I have never been one that truly liked Valentine's Day I love just loving the man I am with all the time. Our Valentine's gift to each other is moving into a house to start our lives together!! I love him in so many ways and am realizing more tonight than ever while he is away from me for the first time since we have been married how much I miss and love him. I am grateful to have a man in my life that will do anything for me. He will do anything to make me happy. He works really hard. He serves as much as he can. He balances me out for all the flaws I have. He is my true love and I know that coming to Florida was the right choice so I could meet him. I know the Lord knows what he is doing and he knew what he was doing with my life and I am glad that i was in tuned with the spirit long enough to know what he wanted to do with me!!

I love Steve not only on Valentine's Day but always but am grateful to have done all I could to meet him and to now be sealed for all time and eternity with him :) Happy Valentine's Day to all of you!!

I am horrible at this!!

Okay so a lot has happened since the last time I have told you all that is going on in my life. My husband and I are moving into a house that we are renting and are so excited!! We move in tomorrow!! Its a 3/2 with a good size living room, kitchen, and den room with a nice area for a dining room also!! we have a lot of rooms to fill up and a lot of things just not enough couches or furniture to fill up the space we are going to slowly find things that will work!! We are really looking forward to having our own place and moving out of my parents house!! It has been wonderful to have a place to stay and to catch up on some debt we had and we are now caught up! The Lord has truly blessed us in multiple ways! We are so grateful for the work that he has. I have 11 students at this moment i teach and then I also still am teaching primary on Sunday's. I have also been called to play the piano in Choir so that is also keeping me busy between all that is going on.

We are looking for a piano a digital one and would LOVE to know of some great brands and some great deals!! I am totally looking for a piano to have so I can teach at my home and not at the parents house anymore!!

We will put pictures up on facebook once we have some things in order and can then put pictures up.

We will not have internet at our house for the first bit we are there which I will keep a journal as much as I can and once I have time to go to the parents will try to do better about writing what is going on here!!! And keep you informed on what we are doing without internet and will only have basic channels for cable!!

We are so grateful for all the blessings we have!! Very wonderful :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Happy New Year to all!! I hope that the new year has brought lots of joys and excitement to all out there! I was thinking of some new year resolutions and a few that I wrote for this new year: 

1. 15 piano or clarinet students 

2. learn all primary kids names (we have quite a few kids and want to learn their names personally)

3. Be fit, run a couple of races

4. Cook often and find new meals (which I can then post on here for all to see and try out)

5. Finish a quilt of my h.s. tshirts, yeah.. still need to do that one.. 

6. Do some canning and sewing

Well that is pretty much all of them. I am hoping to learn lots of cool things this year and I did have to up my goal for piano and clarinet students because I went from 5 students to 9 in a less than a week right before the new year so I needed to up it a little bit more. I am now having people give out my name to others also and starting my own little business it is great. 

Steve has a lot of overtime expected in his job right now to finish the new magic stadium by summer. He is taking one of the hardest classes of his electrician school and we are going to have him go to some summer school and applying to Valencia soon. It is going to be a busy little bit of life!! 

We are loving Florida although, this past week record LOWS!! guess what all of you westerners!! We have had RECORD LOWS!! we had sleet the other day come down and our lows have been in the 20's wow!! Ice on the windshields which is horrible because NONE of us have ice scrapers out here!! Wow really cold weather! It is finally getting into the 60's finally :) 

Been quite interesting winter!! 

Hope you all had wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year!