Happy Memorial Day Weekend

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!  What a great opportunity to remember those wonderful, special people who sacrificed everything in service of our country.  Their dedication to God and country sets an example of how dedicated we should be to the important things in our lives.



 

 This week was a busy one for Reed and me. Reed got to go on a scouting campout to commemorate the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood.  They spent a night in the Valley of Fire.  According to Reed, they ate tons of delicious food (apparently, pizza and breakfast burritos are common fare on campouts? haha) and spent hours playing catch, exploring the valley, and having an overall good time.  In the evening they ate s'mores and enjoyed a devotional .  Reed was happy that he got to go and it seemed he had a really great time.  He came home extremely tired and smelling all campfire-y.

While Reed was gone, I spent the first day cleaning, getting ready for my race on Saturday, and singing Disney songs.  As the evening wore on, I was running out of things to do.  Fortunately, my friend Amanda texted and we arranged to watch a late night chick flick while my laundry was finishing.  It turns out that I have no clue how to work our TV and DVD set-up.  I took like twenty minutes trying to get it to work! 

On Saturday, I met up with my friends, Amy and Joanne, so that we could run the BadBum Dash together!  It's an obstacle course that involves 45 obstacles in 4.4 miles.  I hadn't really trained for the obstacle OR running components so I was super nervous.  Fortunately, Amy and I stuck together and cheered each other through the course.  I didn't skip any obstacles (mainly because that would have meant I'd have to do 10 burpees instead)!  My favorite obstacle was probably the Concrete Climb where you had to hoist yourself up on top of a concrete wall and then jump down the other side....then repeat it like 8 times.  THAT was challenging but I'm glad I did it.  My least favorite obstacle was doing somersaults in the dirt AFTER the pool obstacle.  Who even does somersaults anymore?!  haha  One of the hardest obstacles was the Claustrophobic Crawl.  It was right at the end and the tubes were filled with grit and mud so my arms and legs got scratched up pretty good.  Amy and I finished in one hour and 31 minutes and Joanne finished in one hour and six minutes.  She finished number FOUR overall in the recreational division!  Impressive!  Really, it was probably the most fun I've ever had in an organized race environment....even with the thought of e.coli lurking in the mud crawls.  ;-) 

We spent a lot of this week reminiscing about what happened a year ago.  This marks the one year anniversary of us moving to Las Vegas.  We endured some pretty major challenges in the process but it was exciting to see how far we've come since then.  We've made connections with some amazing people here that have become a support system for us.  I was led to a job where my co-workers were some of my very first friends here and where my nursing skills grew in exciting ways.   I still miss having my parents geographically close but thanks to technology I can still communicate with them frequently.  I miss my Olympia co-workers all the time but I smile because I realize how blessed I was to have such wonderful relationships with a really special group of people for so many years.  Life takes us in all kinds of crazy directions and we shouldn't fear those changes but we should approach them with the attitude of making the best out of whatever situation is given to us.  I will always cherish my time in Washington and I do not regret our move to Nevada.  Life is good and Reed and I feel Heavenly Father's love and guidance every day. 

Weekly Update

Happy May 17th!  Fun Fact about this week:  On the 14th is Paraguayan Independence Day and on the 15th is Paraguayan Mother's Day!  (I hope I got those days correct haha)  I have a co-worker from Paraguay and she taught me those fun facts.  :-) 

Words to live by

We've been busy kids....I think it's only going to get worse as summer comes along.  My work has been a little on the quiet side so I had a few extra hours at home which resulted in a sparkling kitchen and way too much recreational baking.  Reed has had quite a few good breakthroughs with his work and he's moving closer and closer to his goals.

This pic isn't from the party....it still works though

On Saturday we were invited to our friend's daughter's 2nd birthday.  It was an adorable outdoor party with glittery mason jar centerpieces, delicious food, and lots of friends.  While I chatted with friends, Reed spent the whole time playing tag, monsters, and hide and seek with his adoring fans.  The birthday girl clung to his arm the whole time.  I'm pretty sure she has a big crush on Reed. Later on, my friend sent me a message saying that her son (the birthday girl's brother) told her that "today was the best party ever" and when she asked him what the best part was, he said "when Reed chased me and played monsters".  That was the sweetest thing ever! 

I took my first steps into the wonderful world of cooking with food storage.  During my formative years, I witnessed Mom grinding wheat to make bread and utilizing all kinds of dried food storage goodies to enhance all kinds of meals.  I remember Mom and Dad 'dragging' us to the emergency preparedness store to ogle over all the products there.  Those trips were soooo boring....once the supply of sample foods ran out.  Now, years later, I'm all of a sudden super obsessed with food storage and emergency preparedness!  We signed up for a monthly delivery of food storage from Thrive and this week we got our first shipment!  They had a cookie mix in there so I made it.  Mmmm, those cookies turned out so good!  Next, I'm going to make spaghetti with the tomato sauce powder, spices, and vegetables in the shipment. 


Oh, our washer broke!  On Monday I walked into our laundry room to find a small flood.  Apparently, 'tis the season for broken washers because like four other people on Facebook were mentioning similar problems.  We called our maintenance team and they sent in a guy super quick. They decided that it was more cost effective to replace the entire washer.  So a few days later, we got a new washer installed!  It is Uh-Mazing! I spent a couple of days just looking at it because it was so pretty and shiny.  Then I decided to do a load of laundry.  Even more amazing!  It's so quiet and fast! 

We had game night with Andrew and Robin this week.  After eating pizza, watching Geek & Sundry YouTube videos, and talking about care-giving horror stories, we proceeded to play a game called Lords of Vegas.  Basically, you're working to control property on The Strip.  It was way fun!  Reed, through a combination of strategy and beginner's luck, ran away with the victory. The game really captured the essence of Vegas...where enough money can buy you anything but a bad roll of the die can put you in major trouble.  We really enjoy spending time with Andrew and Robin! 

Now, I'm lip syncing to the entire soundtrack of Beauty and the Beast while Reed pretends to not be weirded out by my skills.  haha  I hope everybody has a lovely Sunday and a great week.  We love you all!

<3 The Jacobsens

Happy Mother's Day

Our Happy Mother's Day Picture

Happy Mother's Day!  It's a great day to say thanks to our mom's.  :-)  Reed and I had a great time yesterday making Mother's Day cards....we took a tripod to the park and tried to get a good picture of us for the cards.  My favorite picture was when I was testing the height, lighting and positioning and snapped a picture of Reed where he looks thoroughly unamused.  Truly, we were having a good time.  haha  So then we went home and Reed used his mad computer skills to make some super cute cards. 

Reed is not amused

Funny story:  Reed strongly dislikes it when people send him pictures that have been copied and pasted into a Microsoft Word...it decreases the quality of the image and is just so much more work than attaching a jpeg.  Anyway, so while he was fiddling with fonts and colors for the cards, etc. I decided to play a little joke on him.  I copied and pasted his unamused picture into Microsoft Word and sent it to his email box. He knew something was up when I started giggling like a dork as he opened his message.  He feigned outrage but we got a good laugh out of it.

Happy Anniversary

The biggest and most bestest day of this week was on May 5th....we celebrated our THIRD anniversary!  I can't believe how fast these first few years have flown!  I spent most of the day at work where my sweet co-workers put up with me talking about the day Reed and I got married.  Then I headed home to spend time with my poor, sick husband.  (He had a yucky head cold going on).  We decided to go see Avengers: Age of Ultron.  It was an alright movie but we were pretty peeved that the writers chose to have Captain America swear in the end.  What?!  Then we headed home and exchanged our anniversary letters.  Every year we write letters to each other...it's probably my favorite of our many traditions.  It was a perfect day and a great start to our fourth year. I really am so fortunate that Heavenly Father led us to each other.  Reed is my perfect match and I love him. 

On Thursday we took the chance to enjoy a performance of dramatic theatre.  :-)  Our niece was part of a play called 'The Mischievous Bugs' with her 2nd grade class.  She got to be a ladybug who lost her black spots.  It was pretty cute and quite well done.  All the kids had their lines and songs memorized and the little narrator was cute as a button!  Then the girls took us to their classrooms to show us their desks and introduce us to their teachers.  They go to a very nice little school and it was fun to see another piece of their lives.  Afterwards we headed to Ricardo's to celebrate our niece's performance.  Which leads me to another funny story...

Funny Story:  In the restaurant parking lot, we saw a police car and two police motorcycles.  Since we had two of our nieces with us, we made sure to point out the police car to them and talk about how police are there to protect us and we will not be in trouble if we follow the law.  At that point, the trooper came out of the restaurant and Reed and I smiled and waved at him like we were so excited to see him.  Then we realized the girls weren't waving also so we awkwardly stopped waving.  I think the trooper understood what we were doing because then he smiled and waved at the our nieces and they were excited about that.  haha


Saturday was temple day!  We went for the 10:30 session but then it turned out to be super full and there wasn't any room for us!  Sad day.  But then they opened up another session for us!  Yay!  I met a super nice woman in the locker room and she loved my white dress.  Her comment made me remember that I married Reed in that dress and those memories warmed my heart.  It's exciting to be able to wear my wedding dress every time I go to the temple. 

Time for me to go get ready for church but we love you all and hope you have a fabulous week!

Love, The Jacobsens

Happy May

A little throwback to THREE years ago! 

Happy Sunday!  And Happy May!  It's crazy here....it's consistently 90 degrees outside and this is a month where I'm used to the schizophrenic weather fluctuations of the Pacific Northwest.  Even on our wedding day (May 5th) we had sunshine all morning and then clouds in the afternoon/evening.  It's just too weird being in early stages of summer already.

We've had a good and busy week.  Reed is making huge strides in his marketing work and it's exciting to watch.  He's utilizing new strategies that we've both discussed and agreed upon.  Now it's just a matter of implementation and it's going really well.  So that work has been taking up the majority of his time.  Although he did get to go to Lake Mead yesterday with the scout group that he's with. They had a great time on the boat doing whatever it is you do on a boat....I do know Reed came back sore and tired from tubing and such.   It was hilarious when Reed was eating his Subway sandwich for dinner after he got home from the lake and he goes "I don't know if I'm just not hungry or if I'm too tired to eat".  haha 

Our weekend started off with a fun competition to solve a major world issue.....a Grilled Cheese Sandwich Cook-Off.  For a few months now, we have been debating with our friends Liz and Alayne over what the best cheese is.  I'm personally biased towards Tillamook (you can't be raised an hour away from the Tillamook Cheese Factory and not be a huge fan) and they're biased towards Land O' Lakes.  Finally Alayne and I decided that a cook-off was the only way to solve the issue.  We made identical sandwiches with cheeses being the only difference.  Then everybody closed their eyes and took a bite out of each and then held up their favorite.  It was a dead-even tie because Reed couldn't tell the difference and voted for both.  haha  But then Alayne made a sandwich that had both cheeses on it and we all agreed that both cheeses together made for the best sandwich of all time.  :-) 

My work went pretty well this week.....it was a fairly quiet week but it was punctuated with fabulous news.  We passed our accreditation inspection!  After all the work that went into preparing for the inspection and then dealing with the aftermath, it felt good to know that our efforts weren't in vain.  Now things are going to get extremely busy and we are all jazzed about that.  Happy day! 

Even though I could probably write a lot more, I've gotta go do my hair before visiting teaching and church.  So, I hope everyone has a lovely week and enjoys Cinco De Mayo....tortillas and pinatas
for everyone!  :-)

Love, The Jacobsens