Happy Birthday to me! (Ashley)

I need to get better at this whole blog thing.

It's my birthday! I'm 24 and happy to be alive. David's birthday was April 28. He's 24 and happy to be alive too :)

I figure this would be a good time to tell you that we recently found out that we're expecting a baby! We don't know boy or girl yet but we'll be happy with either of course. I'm tentatively due in mid-January. As you might imagine, with a part-time job and 14 Senior level credits, school is especially difficult now that I can't decide for myself when I want to eat or sleep; baby decides for me and sometimes assignments end up undone. But considering the reason, I'm trying not to let it stress me out too much.

David got a job selling Kirby vacuum cleaners. I guess he prefers to call them "Kirby home care systems" because they do a lot more than suck stuff out of carpets. At any rate, he likes it better all the time as he gets better at it.

We are very happy, even happier than we ever were before, and we understand with hard work and patience and forgiveness in our hearts, it'll keep growing like that. That's the goal. :) I'll add pictures soon.

So, how are they doing?

Now that it's been a month since our wedding (see http://picasaweb.google.com/orangespinner/ChristmasAndWedding2008?authkey=BcZMccGNE5I# for some pictures from Christmas and the wedding), we thought it would be good to let everyone know where we are and what we're doing.

So. Where are we living? In a one-bedroom basement apartment (that could easily be it's own house) in Provo, UT. There's a view down the hill from the living room window, a washer and dryer in the hall outside our door, and a huge king sized bed in our room. The landlords are really great (they even give us rides to Church sometimes), the local congregation offered an enthusiastic welcome to us, and really life is pretty good.

Are we going to school? David is but, thanks to the track system at BYU-I, I'm off this semester. Are we working? We both work now as research assistants for one of his professors, who is working on research papers to publish in scholarly journals. I'm looking for another job as well (I have an interview tonight, wish me luck!) to help out as much as I can. Next semester will find us both in Rexburg, Idaho where I will finish up my classes and he will work, hopefully with an internship there, and then in the Fall we'll be back here in Provo so he can take classes while I student teach, or at least that's the operative plan for now. In 2010 I will have graduated and he has one semester left of his undergraduate before a semester abroad in Jordan (I'm excited!). So, we'll both be done with school by July of next year.

So, we're working hard and enjoying life as we do. I'll do my best to keep this updated so everyone can stay, well, posted! :)