It's a New Year?

Today I read an inspired post from my sister-in-law Amanda, it was all about being positive and how things happen for a reason. I know I am always talking about my boring life in Oklahoma but after reading her post I am going to take her advice and try to be patient and learn from this experience instead of worrying about my unemployed self. Her post was in the back of my mind all morning, I even told her it was like the talk in sacrament that you knew was just for you because I couldn't get it out of my head. At some point today I thought, I can't wait for the new year, it will be so nice to set new goals and work towards improving myself....and then I thought, I don't need to wait 6 more months...I'll just set them now!

Last year Jordan and I had an awesome New Years Eve but we didn't set any goals, we were too busy wedding planning to even think about making changes...wouldn't getting married be change enough? Now I can't wait to set new goals with one another for the year 2012 but for now I am going to set new goals for me :) there is so much I want to improve on but I don't want to set too many goals so I am overwhelmed and wont succeed.

There are a few goals I know I want to set...

1. Read and PONDER the scriptures daily

  

In high school I read my scriptures everyday no matter what but since graduating and becoming so busy with memorizing drugs instead of scripture I haven't done as well as I know I should. When Jordan and I read the scriptures together at night I am amazed at all he knows about the scriptures! Yeah of course he did spend 2 years of his life in "mission land" focusing only on the gospel but he knows soooo much! I want this knowledge, it makes it so nice to understand. He also quotes so many prophets and apostles....which brings me to goal #2

2. Read a talk from a prophet/apostle at least 3 times a week:

We receive the Ensign every month but I know that I have not read it like i should have, and I'm going to change that! I love reading talks, I understand them. They inspire me. I am going to take advantage of the living prophets and apostles and read and PONDER on what they have to say.

A few years ago I got a book with all of President Hinckley's talks in it and I have not yet read it, I am going to change that too. I love President Hinckley so much and I am so excited for this! Jordan wakes up and leaves for his ten o'clock meeting in the morning and I just stay in bed, not that I need to but I just do. As pathetic as it is sometimes I sleep in past 11! I need to start waking up with Jordan and take advantage of this time that i have this summer and do things worthwhile like reading the scriptures and talks each morning  instead of sleeping my life away.

3. p90x Six Times a Week for 90 days

Jordan and I started doing p90x two weeks ago. The first morning after working out i rolled over and couldn't even reach to get my phone I was so sore. I felt as it I had been hit by a train! I hurt everywhere! We kept going and although I still get super sore and want to throw up during the workout things are going better. BUT p90x is HARD ...sooooo HARD! It's hard to wake up each morning and know that you are going to hate yourself as soon as you pop in that dvd but after it's done I feel great that I finished the workout! One thing that really gets me is that I am very weak, I usually run when I workout and due to this my muscles are pretty small, I showed Jordan my bicep the other day and he laughed and said "you would make a funny cadaver...."? Seriously? I guess I need to increase my strength so one day I can make a not funny cadaver? Looks like we have until the first week in September to accomplish this goal!

This is Tony Horton, he is the instructor of p90x and SOO annoying. Today while working out Jordan said, "I think the real challenge is seeing if you can listen to Tony for 90 days!" haha you would appreciate it if you knew how this guy is.

4. Set a Budget - $150/month for groceries

Now that I am actually cooking/baking I realize how expensive it really is! Grocery bills are killing us and although we have cut back on spending I want to cut back even more! I was talking to Lety the other day and she told me that her and kennon only spend $150 a month on groceries! How do you even do that? I'm going to try. I want to make 2 new recipes a week while here in Oklahoma and I'm nervous I wont be able to do this on the budget! If you have any advice PLEASE let me know!

5. Keep caught up on my blog.

Like I said in a previous blog I want to keep caught up with this so I can have a "journal". This is something I will do and I want to be able to look back at our life and remember those funny moments that we shared :)

Welp I guess we start today! I have enough time each day that I know I will master this and i can't wait! Let me know if you have any suggestions!

We Love You Daddies!

We were apart from our dad's this fathers day but we were able to talk to them on the phone, we love technology. We both were born into such amazing families with such amazing parents. Both of our fathers have been such great examples to us throughout our lives and supportive in all that we do.

We are so grateful for these amazing men!!! We missed them so much that we decided to have a little "fathers day" of our own.

Fathers day of course means that our dads were out on the grill so I decided although we were away from home we should have our own Fathers Day celebration and got to work: we were going to have a mini bbq and make ourselves some hamburgers and fries.

I have been wanting to make these homemade buns for a while, (I love making bread now) so we got to work. Since it was a Sunday Jordan was a help in the kitchen and we mixed em together and let them rise only to find out that after their second rise they were huge, and i mean HUGE! We didnt know if we should roll them down or leave them, so we did half and half...

You can see the little ones on the lower right corner of the pan...and the monsters everywhere else.

Here is Jordan's hand so you can see how big these buns really were!



When they came out of the oven we learned that we should have rolled them all down to a smaller size but we also decided that BBQ beef sandwhiches would be delightful on such a large bun.

The finished product, they were delightful!

I suffered an injury in the kitchen this time, burned my arm :( it hurt.

Dinner turned out amazing, Jordan even said "This is delicious, people should pay US to eat" haha. He's so cute.

We had a great fathers day although we did miss our dads! We wished that they were with us so much to enjoy our meal and us enjoy their company but that was not the case, hopefully next year! We love you daddy Marty and daddy Ken!

Back Blogging

One of the biggest reasons blogging has attracted me is it's use as a journal. In high school I used to keep a journal, it wasn't about everyday things, it was only about boys (I'm scared to go back and read it!). I wish that I had kept a journal when Jordan and I started dating so that I could look at that in years to come but I didn't and now i'm kicking myself for it and for this reason I am going to blog about our lives, although you might find it boring because it kinda is.

Since I haven't kept up with blogging I am going to do what I now call "Back Blogging" and blog about things that might of happened a little while ago but need to be blogged about! Like....

MEMORIAL DAY 2011

The office got together and we all had a barbeque, it was so fun. We filled the evening with eating, a little basketball, and just chatting :)

LIGHT HOUSE

After an office dinner at Red Rock Grill, which was AMAZING! Little Lillyanna sat with us for a little while and we fed her lemons which she loved, she is so funny!

After dinner we walked out to the light house on lake Hefner. It was hot and  humid with bugs buzzing everywhere but it was still kinda fun!

Jordan had fun covering the light and then jumping off it once it was pitch black....he's such a cutie and easily entertained!

PIZZA PIZZA

Due to the fact that I stay home lots, ok all the time, I have started learning to cook. A few weeks ago I made homemade pizza crust and it was amazing!

Before

After

http://annies-eats.net/2010/04/29/perfect-homemade-pizza-crust-tips-and-tricks/

Ok back blogging is completed for the week! I hope I don't have to do it again but I know I will!

Get your Kicks on Route 66

I haven't been very good at updating my blog according to what we are up to and I have no idea why...I have ample amounts of time to do so but I just don't, I'm going to change that though.

Now that we are in Oklahoma and the boys knock long days we don't have much time to do anything other than Saturday nights which is always filled with dinners with the team; the guys have a "dinner goal" and they have been doing so well that each Saturday Rove is kind enough to take us out to eat. After the first time we went out to dinner we decided to take a little trip to what we call "Pops"...it's a little gas station on Route 66 with over 500 different kinds of soda! Talk about crazy! Glass bottles line the walls with all sorts of crazy flavors!

These one's were called SODAGUSTING, with flavors like
Bug Barf, Dog Drool, Kitty Piddle, Toxic Slime, and Monster
Mush who could pass this up?!

Jelly Belly Soda?

I chose Waialua Pineapple Soda....it wasn't that great.

Jordan got Route 66 Rootbeer...it was that great!

Now although the soda was mind blowing one of the coolest things was the Giant Soda Bottle Outside!!!

It lights up at night with all different colors! So fun to watch but way too many bugs attracted by it!

Jordan and the "Office Baby" little Lillyanna, she loves Jordan, it's adorable!
She is so cute she kinda makes us want kids
...until we see the not so cute ones at church!

We went back again after our first trip and got several different flavors, I got a peach soda I still haven't tried and Jordan got a cream soda that was amazing!!! It's so fun to go and try these soda's from all over the world, can't wait to try my Chinese blackberry cream soda!

http://route66.com/36.0.html

Free Time Spheee Time

Now that Jordan and I are in Oklahoma I have a lot of free time on my hands. I've been looking for a job like crazy, filling out multiple applications daily, emailing multiple people on craigslist with my resume and references, and interviewing over and over again only to get turned down over and over again. They always ask "How long are you going to be here" or "How long do you see yourself with this company" and I can't lie so when I tell them we'll only be here until the end of August I get shut down. I've even had people tell me that I'm "over qualified" for a position and I just wanna slap them and say "NO I'M NOT" but talking to my dad last night he made me realize that this is a kind way of saying "I see that you have a degree, it's not worth my time to train you when I know you can get a better job somewhere else and I don't wanna waste my time when you are just going to leave me once you're bored".  Now I understand.

Yesterday after leaving another disappointing interview I was feeling a little depressed...I started talking to myself saying I was going to make this a summer for me.I would take all of my spare time and do a bunch of random things like going to the pool and tanning, reading books for the first time in years for fun and not assignment, blogging, and developing skills/hobbies.

In high school I was too busy playing to learn to cook, I never wanted to learn to couchette or sew, I'm not artistic by any means and can't paint so when I went to Hobby Lobby to look for a hobby I got a little depressed: this was the place I was turning to develop skills and talents and everything looked so overwhelming. I found a book called "What's New, Cupcake?: Ingeniously Simple Designs for Every Occasion"

It has so many cute cupcake designs such as hamburgers, the ducks shown above and these cute apples below. I ordered it from amazon because it was so much cheaper! I cannot wait to get this book and start designing these cupcakes! 

I started reading water for elephants, I now want to go to the circus, which is coming to OKC in a few weeks soooooo much! I'm not very far in it but I take it out to the pool with me and read it while relaxing.



And I bought a whole bunch of scrapbooking supplies because I haven't put a single picture of Jordan and I in a scrapbook since we started dating. I figure I have a few things to keep me preoccupied now.

I'm also learning how to cook not only cupcakes but meals as well. I'm trying all sorts of new recipes such as BBQ Beef Sandwiches which Jordan Loved, meatloaf, cheesy chicken and the list goes on and on. Tonight I'm making meatballs and I hope they turn out! I have already started learning to make bread, it's not perfect but it's getting better every time!

I also  made pretzels the other night! They were SOOO fun to make and super easy! I was leaving the mall the other day (after an interview of course) and saw the little pretzel shop...a pretzel sounded so good but I was so annoyed I didn't feel like stopping. I was going over different recipes at http://annies-eats.net/ and linked onto another blog http://www.thecomfortofcooking.com where I found this recipe...once I mixed the dough together and let it rise I didn't think they would turn out, I'm still learning how to use yeast and I didn't think I had the water warm enough to really activate the yeast but I decided I would try to make them anyway...this is how things turned out!

First I separated the dough into 10 different pieces and rolled
them out into straight lines

I then twisted them by following an online tutorial...mine aren't perfect but they'll get better.

I put them in the oven for 7 minutes and this is how they turned out!

Instead of using kosher salt (what was called for in the recipe)
I used cinnamon sugar because this is what we had.

I was very happy with my finished product, but there was one problem, i didn't roll the ends thin enough and the middle of the pretzel was doughy since it was thicker due to the twisting. Next time I will twist the ends thinner than the middle so that the twist will bake all the way through, I think I'm going to turn the oven down a little bit too and cook them longer. Let me know how things go for you if you try this recipe out!

Jack Bauer: aka 24!

Last year while Christmas shopping with my mom she assigned me to find some things to give to Jordan from her and my dad...I thought really hard and came up with a pair of Nikes because he loves shoes and  Despicable Me because he loved this movie when we went to see it but I didn't know what else to get him...while looking Despicable Me I saw the tv series 24.

I had heard good things about 24, that it was so intense and everyone loved it so I thought that Jordan might like it because of the guns/bombs/knives that would be involved. I thought for a moment that I didn't want to watch it and I knew that if he got it for Christmas I would be watching it for sure but then I thought about all those nights watching seasons 1-6 of Grey's Anatomy (which we loved!) and thought that I owed it to the guy.

When we got married we started watching it and we were HOOKED! 24 is about the Counter Terrorist Unit in LA that works to find terrorists who our threatening America. Our nightly routine usually consists of dinner, followed by what we call "Jack Bauer". Jack Bauer is the top field agent in CTU and he basically runs the country because he is so amazing at his job.

This is Jack Bauer

For the first season I would dream everynight about the episode we watched the night before and some days I would wake up very stressed because I was so into my dream the night before! I grew out of the dreams by season 2 but didn't grow out of the love.

We are currently on the 7th season of 24 and I can't wait until Jordan gets home at night to watch it! I don't know what we will do when it's over.  24, or Jack Bauer as we call it has changed our daily lives...how you may ask? We frequently comment that we wish we had a President like President Palmer (the President in some of the seasons), I now think that most politics are corrupt, and we even refer to Jack Bauer during our workouts (the kickboxing ones). The night before we moved from Cedar City we decided to pull our mattress into the living room (since our couch was in storage already) and have what we called a "party" by watching 24 and eating ice cream and it definitly was a party!

We would highly recommend watching 24 with your friends, family or spouse, but not your children...Netflix is a great way to do this!

Oklahoma....where the wind blows...

After graduation Jordan and I moved out to Oklahoma for good old summer sales. Jordan is working for Rove, the same company as last year, but this year he is managing as well as selling. We arrived and the apartments that we were set up to live in resembled the ghetto...they were so scary! People would just sit on their balcony with their beer and smokes in their hands, shirts off, tattooed up and down their bodies, and just stare at you. We got online and looked up the reviews for this apartment and one person described it as "a step above the ghetto". I imagined my summer in this place and started going crazy, I knew I would be spending a lot of time at home and did not want this to be the place I was living!

Pictures of the apartment...these don't even show how horrible they were!

We started looking for another apartment and found out that hardly anyone does short term leasing out here and the ones that did would not have anything available until June, that was 3 weeks away! We looked ALLL over and could not find a thing. We got set up to stay in an extended stay hotel until we could find a place or until something opened up. The extended stay hotel definitly felt safer....but it did not smell safer. They did not have any nonsmoking rooms in this hotel; the first room we went into smelt HORRIBLE! We walked in and walked right out because we knew we couldn't stand it. They gave us a key to another room and we went and looked at it and it wasn't as bad but you could definitly tell that someone had smoked in it previously but they had done some stuff to cover it up. We sat on the bed and decided it would work...it was livable but definitly not ideal.

I actually got this online but this is pretty much what our room
looked like...the bedspread is exactly the same crazy pattern!

We finally found an apartment and ended up staying at the hotel for just a few days. We love our place now! It is right across the street from Jordan's office and really nice!

Jordan works so hard for us, I don't know how he knocks on doors alllll dayyyyy loooooong in this intense heat and humidity but he is so dedicated and such a hard worker...I'm a lucky girl. I love this man :) I just miss him when he is out knocking on the doors all day :(

We're adults?!

Well life has been crazy this last little while! So much has happened and we are turning into adults. Our first step into adulthood was marriage. We then bought a car which we love. Let me tell you what car shopping is not a fun experience, I pretty much hate it. It's so hard to find a good deal out there on a car that you want without spending way too much for little newly weds but we seemed to pull a fast one on those car salesman and bought from a private seller. We love our new car!

After purchasing our first car I graduated from college. Jordan thinks I just have this obsession with thinking I'm old, but I cannot believe I have graduated from college already....this means I must be old! I remember being little and when someone was married or in college I considered them an adult, now I am married and not even in college so what am I? An old adult? It will take some time to get used to but I am actually so glad I am done with school. Nursing school was fun but at the same time horrible; from waking up at 4 AM for clinicals in St George to staying up until 3 AM studying for some silly test I am so pleased that this stage of my life is over!

The Christensen Family at My Pinning Ceremony

The Husband and I :)

My parents and I - they are the reason I made it through college!
I could not have done it without them! I love them so much!

SUU Nursing Class of Spring 2011

WE DID IT!

At graduation my mom kept saying "can you believe you will never have to take another test again?" and I kept repeating "I still have the biggest test of my life ahead of me"...the dreaded NCLEX.

Oh how every nursing student in the world dreads this test....if you don't pass this test the degree you worked so hard for is worthless! Little can I say I studied my butt off for this thing; from the moment I woke up til the moment I went to sleep I was studying. Our house was a mess, there was never a real meal on the table (it was more like sandwiches or Little Ceasers), and I didn't see Jordan very much this week. Every night when we would crawl in bed Jordan would hug me and say "I miss you" and I missed him too but I was way to stressed to spend time doing anything but studying! There was way tooo much to know!

I felt like this man, there were too many books and too much information!

A few days before I took the test I started having severe test anxiety, I've never had it this bad in my life.I couldn't even sleep. I would get in bed and all I could think about was Addison's Disease or Liver Biopsy's or Schizophrenia....what the signs and symptoms were, medications given, nursing treatment....it was pure misery. Once i finally fell asleep I would wake up soon after only to find that I slept for only two hours and that I knew more about bronchoscopy's and colonoscopy's than I wanted to know at that moment!

The morning of my test I woke up smiling because I knew I was going to take that stupid thing and wouldn't have to study my butt off on this day....and hopefully get a good nights rest that night! I was so nervous that if I didn't pass I would have to do the whole studying thing all over again and that was what made me the most nervous out of everything!!!

I arrived at the testing center bright and early to get my photo taken, which looked more like a mug shot, have my vein scanned (ya I know this was a surprise to me too), and basically get frisked. The people at this testing center take their job seriously!

My mug shot

The Vein Scan



The Frisk



Ok so it wasn't a real frisk, but she did make me pull out all of my pockets, turn around in circles, and pat down my self so she could see any lumps or bumps that might be hidden in my clothes!

I entered the test and an hour and a half later it was over, I was so happy when question 75 came up on the screen and then it shut off after I answered. I left the test and felt ok about it, which kind of freaked me out because to pass the test you must reach the very difficult level of questions and they say that when you leave it's normal to feel like crap because you had very hard questions but this is a good thing. This made me nervous. Two days later I found out my results....I PASSED! I called Jordan and could not stop smiling! I was so so happy!

The pretty flowers my husband gave me after I found out I passed :)

I am now an RN, Jessica Christensen, RN. I love how that sounds. It means the studying is over now, school is over! I will never have to take another test again! The next challenge will be finding a job so I can start my career...because it looks like I'm an adult now, and I hear all of the real learning begins now!