SPRING BREAK!!

So spring break was AWESOME! It was so nice to be able to relax, watch movies and go places!
We have been wanting to go to a water park for a long time, and so finally went during spring break. We went up to the indoor water park in Erie PA, which is about 2 hours north of us. The greatest part....it was snowing the whole day up there! But we were at a happy 84 degrees in bathing suits!! SWEET! It was sooooo much fun. We went thursday and spent the whole day up there. This is what the park looked like. Its not letting me see the pics so I have no idea what order they are in, but the pic with the orange slide was amazing! I about had a heart attack the first time I went down it. Its funny how after a while your body adjusts and you dont get such an intense adrenaline rush, but the first few times it really freaked me out. You start by going down a completely black tube and then you just shoot out of the hole at 40 MPH!!! and swish around the "toilet bowl" 3 times before you are "flushed" down the hole into 6ft of water. Its crazy and sooo much fun, we never got sick of going down it. It was weird too cuz you could fall down the hole anyway, once it was feet first, then sideways and then head first....it was really hard to try and correct yourself before you fell down the hole. They also had the larger one that you went down with tubes...you could double. That was a lot of fun too. I think the freakiest part is that most of the slides were pitch black so you couldnt tell when there would be a drop or when you were going to exit or stop.









So on the way home from the water park our cars belt snapped in the middle of now where. You know I used to think that the east coast was packed with people and you didnt drive through endless landscapes of nothingness....well its not true, on our way down from erie we pulled off the road on an off ramp and the closest store...which was a wal mart was 35 miles away. Luckily for us the belt only ripped in half and so we were very lucky to make it home that night without major expenses. It was unexpected cuz we had just replaced the belt about 3 months earlier but found out that one of the pulleys was loose and the belt had slipped off halfway only to be ripped by the loose pulley. Anyway because we had just replaced it we did have the old one in the basement (dont ask me why it wasnt in the car) so jordan was able to replace it with the old one we had just replaced that night until we could go get a new one. So we got home around midnight, and then woke up at 3 am to drive to WA DC!!

Kristen got released from her mission! HURRAY, She had been serving in VA and was able to meet us at the DC temple on friday at 9 am, so after an exhausting day at the water park we made the trek to DC. It was sooo fun tho to see her. We made it there just in time for the session and of course because we were on time they were late and missed the session, so we hung around until they came through and I was able to see her in the Celestial room. It was really neat, and made me really happy to see her. Afterwards we went to applebees with her dad who flew out to pick her up. I was so glad I got to see her, but of course it was way to short of a time and I wish she could have come to pittsburgh for a couple of days before she had to go home...which is in cali.

Then there are just random pics of us, One is of jordan sleeping in our neurophys class....which happens quite often. :) and there is one of a fruit pizza, I had been wanting one of these forever, so last weekend I had the beehives over for our 50 day reading of the book of mormon party and made one. I think it looks really cool, and it tasted even better. The party was a lot of fun, we played softball for 2 hours and then group games, made mini pizza's and then had a fire in the backyard where both jordan and I talked about reading the BOM to them. One of the girls brought two of her non member friends and she gave them both a BOM that night....I was so excited for her. There were 11 girls altogether along with 2 other leaders. We had it at our house, which is the first time anyone from the ward has really been there, it was really fun to see that everyone fit. Oh and then there is a random pic of of a computer place, thats where i work, the little dude on the left is what i do...very easy.

News and Goodies

So, should I share the awesome fun news or the not so fun news first? Lets go with fun news:
So lets see where to start, three years ago we won a free 13 inch flat screen TV from selling with pinnacle. It has been a wonderful TV, 2 years ago (wow thinking about how long ago that was seems impossible) we damaged the TV on our drive from california back to Pittsburgh, and our nice little tv developed 3 lines that has since grown to about 7. And if that wasnt enough to annoy you we ingeniously mounted the tv on the wall in our living room, which was fine but then rearranged the furniture so that it sits too high from the couch, so we found our selves just standing in front of the tv or sitting on the arm of the couch for movies. (it has one of those screens that goes slightly darker at different angles, looking up towards the tv is the worst)

Then last July Jordan was hit over the head with a desire to have a PROJECTOR. Now we like to live by the idea that you never buy anything over 50 dollars right away and if you still want it you can have it for Christmas or your birthday. Its been hilarious tho, when Jordan first wanted the projector I also wanted a high def camcorder so we spent forever researching them just to conclude that we were being ridiculous and since we couldnt really decided which one we both wanted we decided we would not get one and wait till after graduation. Well then november rolled around and I "caught" jordan looking at projectors online. so then it started all over again, maybe for christmas......but then after a month of looking we decided again that we should just wait and we really didnt need one right now nor did we have the money, especially with buying others christmas presents and all. So then around new years jordan is just going bonkers over getting a projector so we came to a deal that if we "fundraised" the money we could get one, but we couldnt use our monthly incomes or savings for it. Well so I didnt hear much about this projector for awhile. But Jordan started getting really upset with watching movies on our TV, it was really funny, so to ease that one we started watching all our movies on the laptop. Then....dun dun dun

Two months later....and by now I was convinced that we really did want a projector and that the stupid thing was going to haunt us forever if we didnt get one, and I am now all projector lingo savvy, I could write a 30 page report all about projectors. AND to our much satisfaction we completed our fundraising! Hurray!

So OUR projector showed up in the mail LAST WEEK!!! YAY, I was at work and Jordan was at home, useless, waiting all day for the projector to show up. He was way worse than a kid before christmas, but that makes it soooo much fun. And of course it didnt show up until 6pm....just to taunt him all day. So now we have a movie room, we nominated the upstairs room the theater room, and it actually works perfectly, we can darken all the windows and the projector sits up on the top bookshelf next to the ceiling the perfect distance from the wall. And we got a SCREEN. It looks amazing, and Jordan loves it to death. Our screen actually showed up yesturday, it has special crystal beaded fabric, to lighten the pic and enhance color.....oooooh. :p So now the upstairs is the baby room and movie room....dont ask me how that works but it will. :)

But wait there's more: Just to announce, I have the coolest older brother in the WORLD. I got the COOLEST toy ever created, and I am literally convinced of this. I got a free 3G iphone from my brother. Isnt that amazing? He is so nice. Really, I cant emphasize that enough. So that showed up in the mail the weekend before the projector, and it is AWESOME. That phone does everything, it is actually a very bad thing, it is very distracting. I love the calender, the fact that its an ipod, its sooooo user friendly, i love the touch screen and everything else. But the worst part is that you can get really fun games on it. So far our favorite is fieldrunners, its a really silly game but Jordan and I are always trying to see you can make it to the farthest level. And I must say I am in the lead currently.....hehe But I also got tetris on there and a fun mario like game. I think my favorite app tho is Pandora. For those who dont know Pandora is a free internet radio, you type in a composer or song and it plays it along with all other composers and songs that are like it. Or you can just pic a genre and it will play that or a station it already has...like "country" or what ever. Anyway since the 3G iphone is always on the internet you can listen to free music EVERYWHERE. So not only can it hold all of our music that we have but now i can listen to anything i want whenever I want where ever I am for free!! Oh life is soo fun sometimes.

I am so grateful for it too cuz I have really missed music. We were getting pretty tired of just listening to our stuff, we havnt bought anything new in a LONG LONG time. Music is so wonderful! So thats my toy, an awesome phone.

Its spring break! Finally, and a good thing it came when it did cuz Jordan and I could not have lasted much longer with out a break, we have way too many classes. so we had this week to catch up on papers and reading. So nice! Our house was also falling to pieces, so we have finally had time to clean everything and organize everything. Our upstairs room was turning into the junk pile of the house, so monday we spent ALL day up there cleaning it out, and going through our filing cabinet and weeding through piles and piles of papers that were never filed. So now its all done, and the room is finally ready to welcome a baby....well it needs to be painted and all that, but that might happen after the baby is born or just after graduation, but if nothing else it is all cleaned and ready for a crib. I love clean houses!!

We also moved the computer downstairs so we can listen to music all the time in our house!

Alright, now for the not so good news: Jordan finally heard back from his school of choice and of course since it is the not so good news he was rejected. boooo! But we new that was the most likely outcome cuz we applied pretty late, most send in their apps in july or august and his wasnt sent in from the committee until the end of october with the deadline being the beginning of november. So we are out to apply again this year. We also only applied to two schools, cuz he really only wants USUHS, but his year we will be applying to about 20 all over the US along with USUHS again. Hes retaking the MCAT in June. So we get to start that long process of studying for the MCAT...boooo! hehe. Anyway so that means we are here in Pittsburgh for the next year, and we have mixed feelings about that. It is really nice to be able to stay in our house and not have to rent for a year, and we will be staying closer to the duplex which will make managing it easy. It also means I can officially paint our baby room. Jordan is looking into being an EEG Tech for the year we are going to be here. When he was volunteering at the hospital he talked to several and they were all neuroscience majors. The hospital trains you and pays during training and starts salary when training is over. We haven't gotten a precise number on how much UPMC pays yet but the range is between 35-55,000. So that will be awesome if he can do that. It will give his app a good boost, hospital experience, and a different letter of recommendation. That is plan A, if that does not work for whatever reason there is a guaranteed plan B which is to do research for PITT, there are a lot of jobs available and he could get one tomorrow if he wanted. Research also looks really good on apps but its not that enjoyable to say the least and it pays....nothing! We could find a more exciting research lab to work in, but most of them are chemical or the counting cell type which is very tedious and boring.