Thanksgiving

This thanksgiving Aaron and I just stayed home. It was actually our first thanksgiving with just the two of us! It was really relaxing, we slept in got up and made dinner while watching the Macy's parade and a championship dogshow. Aaron cooked the turkey breast, stuffing and gravy. He added the juices from the turkey to the gravy, so yummy! I made the deviled eggs, rolls and just made up some instant mashed potatoes. We bought some sparkling blueberry grape juice too! We were so full afterwards, both of us could only get down one plate! Then we played a good card game of Racko and had some chocolate pie! This morning we headed to WalMart for some deals. I'll post about that later. All in all it has been a great weekend so far! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Just Checking In!

Hey y'all! Yes we are still alive!! We have been horrible about updating our blog lately! Since we moved in August everything seems to have been on fast forward and it seems like we have had no time! Here is an update.

Aaron is liking being back in school, he says he is very busy and is trying to adjust getting used to so much studying but overall he says he is a lot happier than he was this summer. We both really feel like he made the right decision in going back to law school. He was able to get a paid job from a work study program at school. He works at the Placentia Library a few days a week for a couple hours helping kids with there home work. He comes home for an hour for dinner then goes to tutor kids at a homeless shelter. I've been getting a little worried that he hasn't had much time to study so we decided that he should probably cut back on some hours so that way he doesn't feel so stressed. He will probably stop going to the library but still go to tutor at the homeless shelter. He plans on applying for interships pretty soon and having the tutoring on your resume looks really good. He was pretty busy this last week because he has had midterms. He will have one more tomorrow then he will be done.

We really like our new ward! We were sad to leave our old ward but we are still in the same stake so we still see all of our friends. We keep in touch with a lot of the young couples and still occasionally hang out. It's so funny how the ward boundaries work here! Our last ward was south of Madison Ave and our new ward is north of it. The south side has most of the apartment complexes so there were about 12 young couples in our ward. Our new ward doesn't have has many of the complexes and there are only three young couples! We have a lot of senior citizens in our ward, but everyone is so nice! We keep having people come up to us and say how glad they are to finally have some young couples! I guess they have been really struggling lately with filling callings because the ward is pretty small. Aaron has already been called to be the activities chairman and I am on the activities committee. Then I got another calling and I was just sustained today as the Relief Society secretary. I also had to give a 15 minute talk today in sacrament meeting! Aaron and I were just talking about how nice it feels to be useful and we really feel like we are getting involved with the ward! They already feel like our family! Everyone is just so great! We are excited about the Trunk or Treat this weekend! We will be combining with the other ward so it will be a big party!

We also got to see Lindsey and Seth a couple weeks ago when they came up for a friends wedding. We babysat Lily while they went to the wedding. She was so much fun and I can't believe how much she can talk now! We went out to Cheesecake Factory the next day and had some awesome food! We loved having them here! This weekend we plan on making a quick trip to Blythe after the Trunk or Treat on Friday. We wanted to go last weekend but I had to get my car fixed and then I got asked to speak. We havn't been to Blythe since Mom and Dad Jeppson have moved. It is going to be weird going there now and only getting to see my parents! Overall though we are just glad to get out of town we havn't gone on any trips all summer! We didn't even go to the beach! So we are looking forward to it. Oh and Grandma and Grandpa Parkins are doing well! We had lunch with them a couple of weeks ago and stayed to visit for a while.

I have been really busy at work! For those of you that don't know I work at a background check company and I do the data entry and update the clients. We have been getting a lot of names for research lately and just got a new client that is sending us a ton of names! It has been hard though because we have been getting all this work but with all the budget cuts in California a lot of the courts have cut back on staff, so it takes longer to get results back. We were so swamped this week that there were some days I was staying two hours late just to get finished. Normally I work M-F but this week they asked if I would come in on Saturday and work 9-5 just to get caught up. It wasn't too bad, I was able to get a lot of things done while I was there and got some awesome overtime! Looking forward to the paycheck on Friday! My boss told me he plans on hiring another person for me to train so we have more help. That is kind of a relief because I felt like I have only been home enough to sleep so it will be nice to split the load a little!

Well that's what's new with us! Sorry we havn't blogged for a while. We do read everyone's blogs and facebook's we just havn't been commenting lately, we have been bad about that! We are doing good and we are happy! Love you all!

What I did on my summer vacation

Mom was reminding me that I haven't exactly blogged for about 3 months, though I'm pretty sure mom has kept everyone up to date on the essentials. I'll try to keep it short enough.

Well I got through my first year of law school. What's funny is the two classes I was probably the most concerned about are the ones I did the best in. In the end I was burnt out. Instead of getting ready for the next semester I decided to enter the work force and see what I could find for a career. With this job market, the best I could do was a sales job. I decided to go with the one that would at least offer a base hourly pay if I didn't make commission. It also let me work as many hours as I wanted, with the office open up to 64 hours. I figured even a minimum wage base was a livable income with two incomes and plenty of overtime for me.
So I took a job with The Credit Exchange. Basically, people going on websites looking for their credit score or finance options would see a pop-up ad for credit consolidation. They get a call from us, and we ask a few questions. If they had over a certain amount of debt and a high enough interest rate, we would pitch credit counseling. If they couldn't afford the required payment, then we pitch debt settlement, a program that hurts as bad as bankruptcy and can actually be harder and more costly. To make a long story short, I liked the job ok. Though it wasn't a dream job, I could do it. At the end of the first month, my supervisor told me I needed to do better, that I had almost lost my job due to "seat pressure" which means they keep hiring people, and then fire the ones who don't make them enough money yet. Two work-days later, he apparently changed his mind and I got sacked. Before I had even left, they already had my desk assigned to the next guy. That's when I decided sales wasn't for me.
So I set out for a new job. That's basically a story of steadily lowering standards coordinating with my steadily raising desperation, culminating in being rejected as a teller for Wells Fargo and never hearing back from Walmart. Who knew that at least one year of cashier experience is more important than a bachelor's degree and a year of law school?
So I've decided that either I'm not ready for the job market, or the job market isn't ready for me. Seems like a good reason to stick with law school. By then, it was almost August. I hadn't registered for classes or secured the needed student finance. But Western State has excellent staff. Everything was in place within four days. (including $900 for the scariest looking textbooks ever) I'm also set to be Secretary of the school's chapter of the J. Rueban Clark Law Society, which I was elected to at the end of last year.
Funny thing. I was a little burnt out after last year, but I still didn't want to walk away. Now that I'm preparing for the next semester, I'm getting excited. It's wierd to think that at the end of the semester, I'll be at the half-way point.
In the mean time, we've decided to move. It's really just down the street, but we'll save about $150 a month on rent, plus $300 off the first month. Best of all, it's about 100 square feet bigger. With the recession, everyone has been dropping rent like crazy. We had looked at this apartment complex last year, and it was in the $1200-1300 range. Now we got it for 885. In the mean time, the place we got here dropped a mere $70 for new move-ins. I think they aren't suffering as much here since it's close to CSUF. So law school starts on the 20th, and we move on the 29th. Wish us luck.

My Husband

I have been meaning to blog about what a wonderful and amazing husband Aaron has been. I figured his birthday would be a perfect time to express how much I love this man! If it sounds a little to cheesy for anybody, sorry, deal with it! :)

Little did I know that I would meet my eternal companion in the little town of Blythe, CA. I was 16 years old and had just started my junior year of high school. I hadn't really thought about dating too much, I was pretty shy, and I really just planned on studying and getting a part time job. I had no idea that three weeks into the start of the semester I would get asked out by Aaron Jeppson. I knew his family and was friends with his sister Lindsey, but other than that we had never really talked to each other. We went on our first date to the famous La Casita Dos and we have been best friends ever since!

Six years later, here we are married and happy! Aaron will always say that he is the lucky one, but I've always thought it's the other way around! He never gives himself enough credit for all the things he does. He is always surprising me by doing little things around the house. He has always been that shoulder to cry on even when he has had a hard day. He has a always made sure we are provided for physically and spiritually. He finds the humor in things, even when times are tough, and always manages to make me laugh. He is a good listener and has so much more patience than I do. He is a wonderful example to me and makes me want to be a better person! I thank my Heavenly Father everyday for giving me such a loving husband! (and don't forget handsome!! :)

Aaron, you are my Prince! Happy Birthday! I love you!!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to those special women in our lives! We love you!

EARTHQUAKE!

Actually four earthquakes to be correct! All of them where around Yorba Linda, which is about 5 miles from here, so they were pretty close. The first hit at about 5:00 PM and was 3.8 magnitude. That was hard enough for our whole building to shake, but not enough for anything to fall off shelves or anything. The bigger event was at 8:30 with a 4.0 followed with a 3.0 right after it. Still, just shook the building, only a little harder. Lastly at 9:00, there was a small 2.5er that I didn't notice until Jamie mentioned it. That brings our earthquake count to about 7 since we moved here. Always fun.

To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity

1) At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.

2) Page yourself over the intercom. Don't disguise your voice!

3) Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.

4) Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions switch to Espresso.

5) In the memo field of all your checks, write 'for marijuana'

6) Skip down the hall rather than walk, and see how many looks you get.

7) Order diet water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

8) Specify that your drive-thru order is "to go".

9) Sing along at the opera.

10) Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party because you have a headache.

11) When the money comes out the ATM, scream "I won! I won!"

12) When leaving the zoo, start running toward the parking lot, yelling "Run for your lives! They're loose!"

Hope this made some people smile. It's called...THERAPY.

Have a great day!