I love my ward.

I think that having such a great ward has really helped me in being so far away from family. I have made so many new friends here and have felt warmly welcomed. I am so grateful for the ladies in my ward that have reached out to me and showed me that they care. It's so uplifting to see that people have an interest in me and go out of their way to get to know Jake and I both.
We were invited to a Halloween progressive dinner with people from our ward and people from the ward that we were split from before Jake and I moved in. It's a costume party so I've been researching ideas of what we could dress up as! Any ideas?
Jake and I both haven't dressed up for Halloween in years but I'm so excited to get together a costume for us! I need some more creative outlets!
I am way excited to see the Taylor clan in a week! And, yay for Tom not getting into the CIA so that they can still live close to us! I would miss you guys if you were so far away!!
I can't wait for Conference this weekend! I really enjoyed Uchtdorf's talk during the RS Broadcast.
Oh yes, I thought I would share that I made my first not-so-good meal since we've been married. Stupid goulash. It was my own fault. I decided to stay home and watch the RS Broadcast on the internet instead of going to the stake center and being social. I was about to make goulash and realized that my recipe didn't have all the info I needed. My mom and sister were both at the broadcast, where I should have been, too. I couldn't get a hold of either of them to ask my questions so.. I winged it! It turned out okay (meaning it was edible) but it wasn't my best. Jake didn't even want to save the rest for leftovers and he doesn't throw any food away! So sad. I guess that's my punishment for staying home and being a hermit.
On the other hand, I did make some really good cookies that have rolos on the inside! Yum.

under the weather with a fat lip.

I came down with a cold yesterday. I was barely able to change the bedsheets and empty the bathroom garbage before I was feeling exhausted. No fun! I sent Jake to the grocery store to buy some things we needed and especially to get me some OJ to sip on, yummy chicken noodle soup for dinner and another box of tissues. I went through 2 boxes in one day! I'm feeling better today. My nose isn't running constantly.
Well, thanks to my sickness, I wasn't able to sleep very well last night. Okay, just to set this story up.. I don't know if I'm the only one that this happens to but, if I fall asleep with my arm resting above my head, the blood gets blocked and my arm goes dead. The first time it happened to me, I could have sworn my arm was paralyzed. Weird, I know. So, I guess I ended up falling asleep in a funny position last night and woke up in the middle of the night feeling uncomfortable. I moved my right arm out from under the pillow and went to cross it over my body as I rolled to my side. Instead, my arm was temporarily paralyzed and my fist decided to punch me in the mouth. I gave myself a fat lip! Apparently I have a mean right hook. All Jake could do this morning as I'm telling him about it was laugh! Also, we both kept talking to the other in our sleep last night. Maybe that's why I wasn't sleeping well, I was trying to carry on a conversation in my sleep!
I would post a picture of my fat upperlip but I'll spare you the visual.

dinner.

We got creative this week with our pizza we made. We used a Boboli pre-made whole wheat crust, alfredo sauce, italian four cheese blend and, for the toppings, artichoke hearts, broccoli and chicken. It tasted so good! I made a peach crisp last night that turned out to be very tasty. I'll have to post a picture of it when I'm serving us up the rest of it tonight! Yum.

Also, I thought I would quickly share a picture of the "mosquitos" that we have here. (I'm assuming they are mosquitos...) These things are about the size of the palm of your hand- that's including the legs. They are all over our apartment building! This one in the picture was just hanging out on our screen door.

Hey Taylor family!

My mom called me a while ago and offered to pay for a flight to Utah to see family for a few days. How could I pass that up, right? So, I'll be flying to Utah late on October 6th (monday) and leaving on the 10th (friday). I'm going to be at Candy and Jerry's wednesday night at, I think, 6:30ish. (I haven't worked out details for sure with Candy. I'll be calling you this week about it, Candy, and to ask you about making Grandma's Chicken!) I would love for as many of you to be there as possible! It's okay if you can't make it, Jake and I will be back for Thanksgiving not too long after that! I hope to see many of you! Especially the beautiful new nieces!
Last tuesday, Jake and I drove up to Auburn and got to go to dinner with Zak! He was up here for a night for business and got to hang out with us for a bit. We ate dinner at Panera Bread-it's kind of like Kneaders-and chatted there for a while. Then we went to get some ice cream at Cold Stone and chatted some more there before dropping Zak back off at his hotel. It was so fun to have him up here! We enjoyed spending so much time with him.
No primary lessons for 3 whole weeks! The primary program is coming up next month for our ward so we're going to be meeting all together to practice during primary time and General Conference is coming up. That means I'm off for 3 weeks! All I have to do is be at practices and make sure my kids are behaving somewhat civilly...
I had a girl in my class that was especially chatty last sunday tell me about her dog that had fleas and then he brought them inside and on and on. (all the while she's itching her legs... ) I'm hoping my class doesn't get infested with fleas..
There's a boy in my class that is one of 5 boys in his family and his response to everything I ask him is "I would punch them in the face". Cute.
Another boy doesn't know how to speak very well. at all. He was telling me all about his picture he drew but all I got out of it was "cookie monster".
I love it! That class is teaching me so much. It's so fun to come up with creative ways to teach the kids in my class and so fun when the participate. I'm really trying to bring the spirit more into our class and focusing on one simple idea to drill into their brains for them to remember.
Well, Jake and I are still enjoying life in Washington! I'm thinking the summer is officially over here. It's getting colder and more overcast. Boo. I hate being cold. But I love wearing cute coats!

finally.

I've been slacking on updating my blog lately! We were in San Francisco all last week and I've been cleaning and getting our apartment back in order all this week. Everything is put away and cleaned up! Whew. Now to finish preparing my primary lesson..

On our trip, we left on monday morning and drove all day and stopped in at the giant Redwoods to camp for the night. The drive was beautiful and the trees were so huge! We were driving next to the ocean and winding through the mountain roads the whole way there. We stopped at the beach to stretch our legs and be out by the ocean. One our way through the Redwoods, almost to our campsite, we came across a huuuge elk! There is a preservation for Elk in the park so these things are able to get quite big! Good thing he didn't step out infront of our car-we would have been squashed for sure! We got to our campsite a little after dark and set up our tent and mattress. There were soooo many stars that you could see out there! I was loving that. I was cold all through the night and didn't sleep well. I think Jake could have had a good night's sleep except I kept waking him up everytime I moved. Sorry, Jake! We got up the next morning and took down camp and headed the rest of the way to San Francisco!

We got there tuesday evening and checked into our room at the Palace Hotel. We planned on walking around the hotel and the area around us after Jake got registered for his business stuff but we crashed. Jake went to business meetings and gatherings the next day while I took my time getting ready, ate a yummy belgian waffle from room service, chatted on the phone with my mom for a bit and then Jake came back to the room with some lunch for me! We ate lunch in our room and then I walked Jake back to his next meeting. I took my camera along with me and went exploring after that. I relaxed by this awesome fountain, walked around the small park, walked the city streets and took a tour of an art school I'll possibly be taking online photography classes from! I have been talking to this school a bit before we went there and they just happened to be a few blocks down from the hotel!

Jake and I took the cable car that night all the way up to Ghirardelli Square where we had dinner and dessert and bought some chocolates from the Ghirardelli store. We hung on to the side of the cable car on the ride up and it felt like we were going to get swiped off by the other cable car or the parked cars on the side of the street! It was quite an adventure.

The next day, I met Jake for lunch by the park area and we got to hang out together for a bit. After Jake went back to work, I headed back to the hotel room so that I could prepare my primary lesson. That night, we got dressed up and went to dinner at Cheesecake Factory. It was so delicious. We were definitely in San Fran because the two guys that were in the elevator with us, then in front of us in line to put your name on the list and then at the table next to ours were holding hands, on a date, together, with each other.

Friday, we packed our stuff in the car and drove the whole 11 hours home. I think it's safe to say that half of our marriage so far has been spent driving in a car for long distances. No more.

Saturday was the BYU vs. U-dub and we had tickets to be there!! We were pretty far up there in the nose-bleeders but we were surrounded by BYU fans so it made it way fun. Our friends Brady and Tracy hooked us up with the tickets and we all rode up together with Brady's BYU car window flag flying on our drive up there. We were sporting our BYU blue and hung out at the Cougar Town rally area a little bit before the game. The game was so intense and so fun. I'm way glad that we went to it!

Well, my primary class is going pretty well. I feel pretty drained after church is over though. I love making activities for them to do. It is hard to get some of them to focus and participate but I don't have any kids that give me major problems. I usually have about 6 kids in there each week. Speaking of my calling, I really should finish preparing my props for it. We're learning about paying our tithing this week!

I think that's it for the updating. I'm sure that I'm forgetting something..
Sorry it's so long! Hopefully I'll keep this updated more often so the entries don't get so long!