Our very first Christmas Tree

So this is my, Daniel's, very first post on this blog. During this week Ashley and I have been working quite a bit (Ashley more though). So Ashley was supposed to not be working at Deseret Book anymore because they wouldn't give her Christmas off for Marci's wedding, but since she is irreplacable they have not let her go and she is working about 39 hours this week. We spent Thanksgiving with Ashley's family and had a great dinner, played some old school N64 and went and saw the Blindside. We all liked the movie a lot and I would recommend it to everyone, it really was a great movie.

Since it's been awhile since we've posted.....we'll try to give the reader's digest version of our life the last few months: school is going well and we both seem to like our classes, but can't wait for the Christmas break to be able to spend some time with the fam over on the east coast. Over the break we are going to D.C. to see Marci and Alan get married, the whole Alan thing is kind of confusing sometimes (since my brother's name is Alan, too) so we were trying to think of a good nickname for Marci's Alan, any suggestions? After the wedding we are going to spend a week in Rodanthe, North Carolina in an awesome beach house with all the family and nieces and nephews. Ashley and I are excited to see new baby Peter and how all the other nieces and nephew have grown. Ashley and I have really gotten into The Office lately and mario party on N64, yes we're nerds. Ashley is pursuing an internship at the Museum of Idaho and I have looked into an internship in Accounting at PriceWaterhouse Coopers most likely in New York, but I need to do really well in all my classes for the rest of my time here at BYU-I. Hopefully if we end up in somewhere big like New York Ashley can get a job at a cool museum.

Last night we set up all our Christmas decorations and we have this tradition that we are going to collect an ornament everywhere we go. So we need to get one in D.C. Ashley's mom got us our very first one and we already have an awesome Boston and London ornament. So our Christmas tree is fake :( I'm not too happy about it, but I can deal with it until we have our own house someday in the distant future but fake trees are just wrong.

So that's everything for right now. Only two and a half more weeks of school!! YES! :)

{Post edited by Ashley ;) }

La lune du miel [hOnEyMoOn!]

It's Mr. and Mrs. Jensen!!! :D Finally! We're back from the honeymoon, settled, and already slammed with homework, work, and balancing time with each other. Now we shall share the adventures of our honeymoon. Many people ask: Boston?? Why Boston?? Let us explain: Why would we want to spend our first week married on a beautiful beach, somewhere warm, completely in a zombie-like brainless state while acquiring skin cancer??? No, no, no. Not us. We went to Boston for intellectual stimulation, good people, good food, whales, and a Red Sox/Yankees game!! :) Daniel's dream come true. I've seen the Eiffel Tower, so I'm good. And Boston was a ton of fun!

Here's a tip: Don't plan to take a 7 AM flight the day after you got married. Who knew weddings were so exhausting??? We arrived at the Idaho Falls airport in what we thought was reasonable time. The couple in front of us preceded to unload their baggage and repack in ordered to fit the weight limit. Super. By the time we got to the counter we were too late. :( But I was too tired and too hungry to care. The next flight was at one so we went to Denny's, ate, then headed back to our hotel and asked them if we could go back to our room to try and sleep a few hours. They let us. The Hilton was great about everything. Then at one... back to the airport. We arrived in Boston after midnight. I used my very sleepy internal compass to get us on the subway to get us to our hotel. At a quarter to one, we were finally in our hotel room.

Our hotel was great! Right in the heart of downtown Boston, close to everything! And everything was so beautiful. Our second night they left us chocolate covered strawberries and champagne [which we did not drink :) ] in our room. We found church on Sunday by thankfully running into the missionaries!! Great ward. Sweet church building. After church we walked over to Boston Common and rode the swan boats in the lake and walked around the city and checked everything out. It really is a beautiful city.

Monday:

OFF TO FENWAY!

The tour we went on took us everywhere you can't go during the game: up in the highest, nicest reserved seats, the media boxes, and up on the Green Monster! In the media box [above] we sat next to a phone labeled ESPN.....so tempting to pick it up.

THE GREEN MONSTAH!


TRINITY CHURCH-One of the coolest churches in the US. I think.

And here is our "romantic" honeymoon cruise out to see the whales!!!! It was so nice to get out on the water and see all the little islands and of course the humpback whales!

The pictures don't do the whales justice. They were cool. And closer.

Then off to the Aquarium!! It was pretty dang cool. Turtles, jellyfish, penguins, seals, and sharks!!!

Then, believe it or not, we went out for seafood. Yes, seafood. If you know me at all, I am completely anti-formerly-swimming food. And I ate it! And I lived! Here we are Legal Seafoods eating salmon, and crab, lobster, and shrimp tacos. Actually pretty good. I was surprised. Although, doubt I'll eat anything like that anytime soon.

Here we are eating a place called the Barking Crab, definitely the coolest place we ate the whole time. It's down on the harbor with an amazing view of the city. They have live music and everyone is loud and they brought Daniel's giant Alaskan crab legs in a lil plastic bucket with matching bib. I just ate fish'n'chips. Not to shabby. I liked Daniel's pricey crab legs better. :)

The Freedom Trial!! A cleverly marked historical trail that hits all the major sites in Boston. We saw the cemetary where Sam Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock are buried, along with Ben Franklin's parents. We saw the first integrated church, the place of the Boston Massacre, lots of old churches and states houses, great shopping, little Ireland and Italy, Old North Church, and Paul Revere's house. Our honeymoon turned out to be very educational. :) It was way fun.

We also made it out to Salem to see all the creepy witch stuff. Salem is such a cute town. Haha. We went to the witch museum and saw the house of the Seven Gables from Nathaniel Hawthorne's book where we went up secret passageways. Then we just walked around.

Wow, I am all blogged out. Everyone will just have to wait to see the fantastic pictures from the much anticipated Red Sox game. Daniel would probably agree it deserves a post of its own anyways.

Thanks to everyone who was at the reception and/or wedding and helped out with everything. Such a perfect day!! And congrats to Alan and Dianna and new baby Peter!! Can't wait to meet him! I love being an aunt! :)

Beautiful Day

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend the temple for the first time. :) It was a beautiful day. I was so happy to have my parents, Daniel's parents, and my grandma there. And it was Daniel's mom birthday [hApPy BiRtHdAy!] so we went out to lunch afterwards.

The last couple weekends we've done lots of fun stuff too. Of course, we have no pictures to prove it. That is serious problem I need to take care of. :) I love photography, but when it comes to taking pictures of myself-I am extremely hesitant. Then, I always regret it later. Perhaps this blog will inspire me to take more pictures of the two of us. :) Maybe.

Two weekends ago we went down to Provo to hang out with Daniel's cousins Jason and Kayli. It was such a fun weekend. We stopped in Salt Lake on the way there and I quickly learned that it is much easier to find everything when your parents are driving. I only kinda got us turned around a few times. Then we made it to Jason and Kayli's house just fine. Along with them and a couple of their friends we went to Seven Peaks water park in the midst of a rainstorm. :) It came and went and we still had great time. After that we went for a fabulous Italian dinner and then Comedy Sports. Hilarious! Super fun. Sunday we went up to the Ogden area for Kayli's cousin's baby blessing. Her family was gracious enough to let us partake of all their delicious food afterwords! Thanks! And thank you Jason and Kaylie for being such wonderful hosts!

Just last weekend was the famous Jensen reunion. I finally got to see Richfield, UT that I've heard so much about. ;) It's kinda cool how it is smack in the middle of Utah where everything starts changing from green to orange rock. Cute small town. I met lots and lots of people; I doubt I can remember all their names, but Daniel has a great [and large] family. I'm pretty lucky to be marrying into a family full of fantastic people. That evening Jason took Daniel and I four-wheeling. Yeah, we were pretty dang hardcore. Kinda. It was way fun. Thanks again Jason! Haha. :) And just hanging out with his family was great.

So now we're caught up. Daniel finished school with great grades and now there are only two weeks until the wedding!!! Two weeks?!?! We can hardly believe it. We never thought it'd get this close. And we are soooo excited!! I had my bridals taken on Tuesday and oh my word I had a blast! I loved being dressed up and wandering around downtown and the park. Kimberly Smith is my photographer and I love her!! She is so much fun and so creative! Check her out at http://www.kimberlysmithphotography.com/

That's all for now. I doubt we'll post again until after the wedding! :) Peace out!

What the Hail?

T'was a great fourth of July weekend. It started very early and ended late, and we were very very tired by the end of the day. It all started with this:

My dad is hiding on the end.

My dad decided that our ward should have a pancake breakfast and flag raising at 7 o'clock in the morning. :) But it turned out to really fun. Daniel even dragged himself out of bed to come see. (Although, he was late) My dad, along with other men and young men in the ward came together to make a rather decent band for the flag raising ceremony. And it was very cool to see my dad playing his trumpet in public again. It's much more entertaining that way than in the basement at weird hours of the morning/night. It was also cool to see everyone else in the ward participate. Then we had a most scrumptious breakfast of pancakes, and then Daniel and I

headed off for the mountains.

There's something great about living in Idaho, it's the outdoors. Admittedly, our summers are short, but oh how they are worth waiting for. We decided to go hike up Palisades, northeast of Idaho Falls. The drive up there is even beautiful. The farms rolled over the hills like lush green carpet and the mountains are so crowded with pine trees, it's amazing they can breathe.

And the sky in Idaho has to be one of my favorite things. It turns the most gorgeous blue in the summer. It's the color I want to capture for my wedding. It's a refreshing and happy blue. (And don't get me started on our amazing sunsets, haha). It really makes me appreciate the beauty of this earth.

My trusty guide. I quickly learned to just follow in his footsteps.

The Lower Lake. We really need to hike to the upper one when we have more time.

So we hit the trail head under blue skies and lots of sunshine. We had a lot of fun hiking up to just the lower lake and having lunch. Due to time constraints (and my fear of becoming crippled), we didn't do the upper half of the hike and just headed down. It's a very good thing we did. Not even an hour into the hike downward menacing clouds filled the sky and the thunder started rollin'. And when you are neatly sandwich between two mountains it really shakes your whole body. Cool, yet frightening. So we continued downward, running intermittedly. Then came the rain. And oh did it rain. It started as a sprinkle and we actually enjoyed the cooling effect, but not before long we were completely soaked through. The ground was already wet from a storm the night before so water pooled and pooled and ran down the trail as a nice sized little stream. Needless to say we were very wet, very cold, and very muddy. And I only slipped once. Haha. The storm was not content though. About a mile or two from the trailhead we started getting pelted by hail. Hard. Decent sized hail, coming down hard enough to make you flinch. Luckily we were crossing a bridge at that time and took shelter underneath it with a nice couple from St. Anthony. We eventually made it all the way down, remarkably still in good spirits. For that I give credit to Daniel. My inner girly girl just wanted to whine and complain of how cold and wet I was, but he keeps me happy. And as tradition calls for, we picked up some square ice cream in Swan Valley, along with a steamy cup of hot chocolate. :)

Rain is hard to photograph, but this isn't even the worst of it.

Looks innocent enough, doesn't feel so great.

After extremely needed and wonderful showers, we met back up and had dinner with Daniel's parents. Bratwurst, ahhhh, an American classic, from Germany. Haha. Then we headed off to the fireworks. We hung out with some friends on the river and ate lots more good food. The weather was great, even though the possibility of rain lingered. And that's it. We watched the show and went home extremely exhausted. It was a great weekend. And I have to admit it is really really great to live in this country no matter how much I rave about France, England, Italy, Germany, Australia, or whatever other country I am at present in love with. Those places were meant to make great vacations for one happy little American. :)

In other news: The announcements are out!!! I put them in the mail myself today. It's official, the whole world will now know that we're getting married. And that's the way it should be. Haha. We are both very excited. The wedding seems close enough that it might actually take place. Hoorah!

Return of the Blog!

So, after a long and winding road, my laptop has been returned to my possession with only a few handicaps. 1) Everything has been erased and re-installed. I do still have my pictures and documents so that's good. 2) The wireless thing-a-ma-jig hiding deep within my computer is very much broken so now my laptop is the proud wearer of what looks like a USB drive on steroids. Haha. In order to get wireless internet, I must plug in this giant stick that looks like it ate three other USB drives. All in all, I'm happy I have it back.

How about an update about whats been going on these last couple of weeks? Ok.

Daniel and I registered a few weeks ago at Bed, Bath, & Beyond and Macy's. I think the process was much less painful than Daniel expected, and I tried hard to make it quick and easy. The worst part was probably listening to the lady at BB&B ramble on and on about how she rambles and truly doesn't really like people. Yeah, she was a gem. Macy's took a grand total of maybe thirty minutes. We were starving, and done shopping for the day. But wait, the story gets better. Just last week I was checking all our registry stuff online to make sure everything was okay and shop for more presents. On the BB&B website a bunch of our quantities were off so I spent some time fixing those up, no big deal. But then I came across some rather bizarre stuff. I found that "apparently" Daniel had registered for 30, yes 30, $350 tiger print rugs! Yeah, tempting but no. I was rather perplexed as to how that happened, but no matter, I deleted it and it was gone. It gets better. Do you know what I found next? A breast pump, stroller, and some book on raising children. I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair. Honestly, no idea how any of that stuff got on there. And if you buy us any of the previously mentioned products, well the rug...that's kinda weird and unnecessary for you to spend so much on something that won't fit in our apartment, and any of the latter stuff, well.... that's just uncalled for. Haha. There are no kids coming our way for a while.

All the way back on the 12th was Daniel's birthday. Yay! I was so stressed about what to get him, and I have no idea why. I guess I always pressure myself that I must buy the most perfect gift. I don't know how well I did, but he seemed to like everything. We went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse with my mom and his parents, and then cake and ice cream at his house, and then Daniel and I went to see Angels and Demons. Cool movie, but we really didn't like watching old men burn to death. It was a good weekend. Even if he had to drive all the way back to Rexburg to work Saturday. (This whole commuting thing has gotten old quickly for both of us.)

Newest wedding annoyance has been wedding announcements, bleh. I've seen nearly 12 drafts/proofs of announcements that have been everything from way to retro to just ugly. I gave the announcement people exactly what I wanted except it had tulips, and I wanted daisies. Not that difficult eh? Sure it is! It took them nearly three weeks to get me something that I was actually pleased with. What a pain. So now we are in the process of hand addressing each envelope with love. They'll be going out next week. Hope everyone likes them! And if for some reason I don't have your address please send it to me via Facebook or email me at ashleymarie8907@hotmail.com. If you think for just a second that I don't have it, just to be safe, send it to me again.

So that's all for now. We're really looking forward to the long fourth of July weekend and for the month of July in general. Summer finally starting to peek its little head out from behind all those rain clouds, and July is packed with lots of wedding to-do's. 51 days, 5 hours, and 6 minutes. Not that I'm counting....

A Shout out to Moms.

Can I just say what an ENORMOUS help my mom has been in this wedding planning process? She just spent two hours with me "mock" registering so Daniel and I don't have to spend four hours doing it on Saturday. And he and I both know we can get frustrated with each other while shopping. I think it is the combination of each of our indecision. My mom has gone with me to every single appointment, consultation, and website possible. She has always provided great advice and she is greatly creative and that helps a lot. She and I made all eight centerpieces in under an hour Tuesday night! How impressive is that? She is great at helping me find what I want. (But sometimes I do what she wants just because I don't want to fuss over it, haha). She is great. Daniel's mom is equally great. :) Having been through three weddings already, she has a wealth of knowledge and is always enthuisastic about whatever new thing we are working on for the wedding. I really got super lucky with fantastic in-laws. Even though this has been what feels like the never-ending engagement, all this time has really made the planning process as stress-less as possible. Which in turn keeps my mom's stress level at a minimum. And I'm just lucky because I'm the only girl and this is my mom's only chance to be the one throwing the party. :) I can't wait to see the final result! 72 days!

Thanks Mom. You're the best!

The Proposal :)

So since nothing exciting is going on right now, except the usual wedding plans, I figured I would post our lovely proposal story.

Last semester Daniel was working in Rexburg and living in IF, so every time that I could I would go home with him for the weekend. One particular weekend (February 7th) he told me that he wanted me to come home with him on a Saturday night after work to have dinner with his parents. This wasn't anything out of the ordinary, so we made our way home and we so often did. I wasn't necessarily expecting a proposal that day. I knew it was coming, but no idea when, although I did have a hunch it would be on Valentine's Day, which was also our 6 month anniversary. I was wrong. So, we showed up at his parents house and lo and behold there is no food. Curious.... His mom fed me a very well played lie (I can't believe she lied to me! Haha (: ) about having Daniel and I take some book to a friend. Daniel and I jumped back in the truck. He claimed he wanted a CD so he ran back in the house and grabbed one, and I'm supposing a ring as well. :) We drove up in the hills in Ammon and I was as oblivious as can be. I didn't suspect a thing until we pulled over on a random spot of road. It was then that my heart started racing and I lost all feeling of my arms and legs. I was frozen in the car until he came and opened the door and let me out. We stood there and admired the beauty of our cute lil Idaho Falls admist a gorgeous golden sunset. It was perfect. Daniel seemed relatively cool and unnerved but when I get nervous I talk a lot. So I was chatting away as fast as humanly possible. But he quickly got to the point. And before I could say anything else he was on one knee in a pile of snow with my beautiful ring in his hand. He bravely ventured to do the whole thing in french <> with only minor pronounciation errors. :) It was perfect. My mind spun while I decided to answer in English or French, and I did exactly what I said I wouldn't do: I said "yeah". Haha. Oops. But it all means the same thing. He had cleverly collaborated with my mother and roommates and he had my lil black dress and shoes and stockings (the whole deal, he is good) ready to go for a fantastic dinner. And that's that. We're getting married and couldn't be happier. :)