a boquet of sharpened pencils

"dont you just love [rexburg] in the fall. if I new your name and address I would send you a boquet of sharpened pencils!"

For the first time ever, I believe I am experiencing fall in rexburg!

Normally it goes from summer to winter over night!! But this year we have been so lucky! instead of snow, its been warm enough to have rain! so now I can actually step on crunchy leaves instead of snow! :) its a beautiful thing, my friends.

i love fall time when the leaves fall of the trees and its just crisp enough that all you need is a jacket and your nose gets just a tad cold instead of frost bite.

The leaves are falling off the trees and today it even smelled fall-y.

I know the snow is just around the corner and our lovely weather will be gone for another 7 months, but I think I will enjoy this lovely fall day while I have it! :)

today is a good fall-y day :)

The Best thing about the future...

is that it only comes one day at a time!!

I feel like whenever I think I've got the future figured out, I change my mind and go back to square one. I think I've returned to this square at least 71 times since the start of the semester.

The current mindset: apply for the nursing program

The new current mindset: dont apply for the nursing program

The newest current mindset: apply for the nursing program

you get the point. Im ridiculous sometimes, I know!

So Im not sure what lies in the future for Kyle and I, but I know it will only come one day at time for us to handle. Thank goodness it works that way!!

In the meantime while we try to figure out what to do with each day we have, we have been chugging along with school. My focus seems to be no where near Rexburg and Kyle is stressed to the max with his math class. We both are looking forward to Thanksgiving break already!! :)

We celebrated our 6 month anniversary this weekend. (cheesy, i know!) I feel like we've just always been married, but also like our wedding was just last week!! it sure has gone by fast and we have loved it all! :)

6 months down, forever to come!

blessings of our lives

Kyle and I have had some pretty amazing experiences over the last week or so. We got to go down to Utah over labor day weekend because my aunt and uncle adopted the cutest little boy about 14 months ago and now that the adoption has been finalized, they were able to have him sealed to them in the temple. We were able to attend the sealing and it was such a neat experience for both kyle and i. That was the only other sealing we'd been to other than ours, and it's a rare occasion to go to a live sealing of a child to parents. It was such a beautiful ceremony and was such an incredible reminder to me of the amazing blessing that we have to be sealed to our families for all eternity. What a great blessing to know that our families live together beyond this life. I never want to imagine my life with out kyle and im so happy that i never have to because we were sealed for all eternity! we get to spend FOREVER with each other! :) While we were in Utah we also got to visit Temple Square.

Another one of the great blessings we've seen in our lives is tithing blessings. I had an issue with my W-2 form and i wasnt able to file my taxes until august (yes, they are due in april!) Because of it, i couldnt turn in the tax paper work required for financial aide through pell grants or a scholarship. In the meantime, kyle and i slacked a litle bit in our regularity of paying tithing. (dont judge, it happens!) We would forget to bring it with us to church or forget it was even fast sunday. But we finally got our act together and did what we knew was right. Well not to long after, we both got online to find out that both kyle and i were given a generous amount of financial aide through grants and scholarships! It's been an incredible blessing to have help paying for school and such a reminder to us that we cant afford NOT to pay tighting, because the blessings come back to us ten-fold! :)

Kyle and i took a day trip to Yellowstone last week. I went when i was little so we decided to go again. It was pretty chilly, but lots of fun to see Old Faithful and to see all of the animals. We also went to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center which Kyle loved! We got to watch them feed the bears and the wolves! It was a fun day.

school is about to start up again so we both will be busy busy busy! Another a semester ahead of us! Bring it on!

look out TLC...

a new show is on its way! no, were not having 6 kids at once or having any medical breakthrough surgery, we are honing in on our betty crocker baking skills! it all started with the sugar cookies and last night we tried fondant icing. although it didnt taste all that delicious, our decorating skills are giving carlo's bakery a run for their money. ok, probably not, but we had lots of fun playing with the edible (although only kyle found it yummy) playdough.

our creationsall of the cupcakes we made! We made a golfer, a snowman, a frog and birds, my specialty was the bows!

Kyle's birds. i think the red one looks like the red robin but as a baby!

What can we say, Rexburg is a little dead right now and with no school to keep us busy, we're finding our own entertainment!

T.I.W.M.C.T.K #1

Ok, so i may have stolen this idea from someone elses blog. But since this is my only sad excuse for a journal, i think ill share for my future posterity the things i want my children to know. I was trying to fall asleep last night and part of my mother kicked in and my brain wouldnt shut off. i dont remember what mental track brought me to this memory, but i decided i wanted to share it with my children some day, so that they can learn from my mistakes. I had a friend one time who told me all of these things she'd done that she and I both knew were wrong. I remember that i was too worried about keeping our friendship that instead of telling her taht what she was doing was wrong, i just ignored it. What kept me tossing and turning all night was that she knew what she was doing was wrong and she knew i wouldnt approve of it, but i didnt do anything about it. and i feel like now that she needed me to tell her to straighten up. she needed me to address it with a matter of importance in order for her to know that i cared about what she did. and she needed someone to stand up for what was right when she hadnt done so herself. So future children of mine, dont ever hesitate to stand up for what you know is right. I wasnt by any means encouraging her to continue what she was doing, but by not speaking up about it, i was doing nothing to help her and nothing to stand up for what i knew was right. I want my future children to know who they are and what they believe in, but more importantly i want them to have the confidence to share that with others so that they can stand up for what is right when noone else is. got that kids?!

I think ill just put in my request for perfect children.

you can never have to much sugar in sugar cookies!

While walking aimlessly through the grocery store aisles (never a good idea!) i had the sudden urge to achieve the epitomy of my mothers baking skills and attempt to make her delicious sugar cookies (no easy feat i assure you!) but with a little bit of extra sugar and making a riskinator move by adding more sour cream soley because i thought something was "missing", i have to boast a little and say i didnt do all that badly! in fact, the only thing missing to make give them ultimate perfection is the "mom touch" which i assume only comes after years of perfecting the sugar cookie science! I even made homemade frosting and colored some different colors so kyle and i could decorate them. We had tons of fun using our cute cookie cutters that we got for our wedding.

For the last bit of dough thats not quite enough to roll out and cut, kyle and i sculpted our own shapes. I made a femur bone! :)

We only have a couple of weeks left before school starts up again I'm enjoying the no schedule life, but kyle is starting to get a little stir crazy! We had such a fun time on a vacation with my family to flaming gorge, spending a week on a house boat with no plans but to soak up the sun and have fun boating. I learned how to kneeboard and took one for the team when i was the first to try a 20 ft rope swing, only to find the results were a very painful backflop. (what can i say, i was born with lack of fear and grace!) Kyle faced his fears and jumped off the top of the house boat and even learned to dive! We all were very impressed!

One night we went off the slide late at night! It was such a fun week!

its a busy life!

Kyle and I have had a few busy weekends! I've been meaning to write about all of our adventures but schools been keeping me too busy, so here are the highlights!

Horseback Riding

Kyle decided to face his fear of horses and signed us up to go horseback riding with the school! It was freezing and kyle's first horse was so lazy they had to switch him, but it was lots of fun! Kyle has decided when we are rich, we are going to get horses!

Families

Kyle's brother, Kory, came home from his mission and we flew to Colorado for the homecoming. Unfortunately, our flight was delayed because of bad weather and we missed the big "WELCOME HOME!" and kory instead had to wait for US to fly in! But we had lots of fun having ALL of the Johnson all together for the exciting event! Kyle's older brother Jordon took a book called missionary reminders with him on his mission. He made his own notes along with the 500 missionary tips and then gave Kyle to book for his mission. Kyle did the same and then gave it to Kory to do the same and in 15 years Jonah will have lots of advice! We had a fun time reading over the notes and laughing at what all the boys had to say. We had a really fun weekend!

The next weekend we headed back down to Utah for my grandma's 80th birthday. We made our own makeshift four-square court and played in the sun and my sister brielle finally got to share the exciting news with my parents that her and jared are expecting a baby in December! Again we had lots of fun and had a hard time going back to school.

Inspiration

This morning Kyle and I went to watch the runners come in from the Teton Dam Races. It was fun and mob mentality quickly inspired Kyle and I to run in the races next year. Kyle thought maybe he could do a full marathon and I was feeling really inspired and said I could run the half marathon! It would be cool for me to say I ran a half marathon and I know Kyle could do a full, but we'll see how long this inspired running high lasts!