Well I thought I should catch up from the last few months. Unfortunately our computer storage is full and we have not been able to get any new picture on it so I will do my best to get some on here. Annalee is now 4 months old. She is growing up right before our eyes and it is a little bittersweet. She has found her voice and is sometimes very loud. She doesn't cry a whole lot but she shouts at us when she wants something... Its cute for now. She loves being outside and sometimes shouts at us until we bring her outside. She wakes up smiling around 6:30 every morning. She is a happy baby. She drools more than a bulldog but is MUCH cuter than one! Needless to say, we are enjoying every moment with her. We love her so much. Our singles ward is enjoying her too. We are bombarded at church. The singles just can't get enough of her! Even the single guys want to hold her during class! One ward member who spoke last Sunday mentioned she brings "a lot of joy to the ward". For the first couple of months we didn't bring her to church because we were worried about flu and RSV season. Well, the singles wanted to welcome her in a special way so the activities chair created an activity called "night at the oscars" each FHE group made a clip to a movie. No one new the point to the movie. In the end it showed someone coming into the varsity theater (where they were all viewing the final movie). At the same time, we all came walking in as a family... every one cheered and the music "The Circle of Life" was playing (from Lion King). When we reached the stage Jonathan held her up like Rafiki held Simba in the beginning of the movie. It was so much fun! We are loving the singles ward! We blessed Annalee about a month ago. I even made her dress! And her great Grandma Inge made her blessing blanket. And the dress (I knnow its not a very good picture but there will be better ones later. Well, as promised, here is a "belly shot" (approx 37 weeks). Better late than never... Annalee is always wanting to be up... whether its sitting or standing. She was sleeping on her boppy a couple of nights ago and began waking up and trying to sit up. I reached over to catch her head and she fell right back asleep. Some big news... Jonathan is done with Snow!!! He won't be done with school for a while but he is finished at Snow which means no more commuting and no more nights alone! Well thats all for now... there will be more as we get the picture on the computer.

She is here!!!

Well its definitely time to catch you all up on what is going on in our lives! My last post mentioned a baby and a promise to send you "baby bump" picture and then we disappeared... we ll a lot has happened and we will start with the most exciting news: She is here! Introducing little Annalee Claire: She had quite the rough start. She came mid January but was in the NICU for just over two weeks with various problems and ultimately we still do not know for sure what happened. Long story short, they surprised me at my doctors appointment with an emergency induction. I was induced, she came, she went to the NICU, had CPAP(high pressure O2), GI suction tube, IVs galore, PICC line, nasogastric tube, heart and oxygen monitors, bilirubin lights, and enough pokes and treatments to last her life. It was very hard to see her that way but she was a fighter. She didn't give in to those nurses too easy. The hospital staff was incredible through it all. They put up with me living there and bugging them 24/7 and gave us needed advice and support. We definietly saw the Lord's hand in her imrpovement and are grateful to all those who prayed for her. She is now home and doing great! She is waking me up sometimes every hour and loves to be snuggled. She makes the cutest sounds in her sleep and even her cry is adorable. She is the most perfect little girl we could have imagined. I will unfortunately have to go back to work while Jonathan is finishing at Snow. Anyone have any ideas for working from home? first family photo: It looks like the "Baby bump" pics are not on our computer yet so those will have to come later. We did so many other things since our last post too. We went on a "last vacation without kids" to St. George, celebrated both our birthdays, and even participated in wardstock... yes that's right, like Woodstock but LDS singles ward style!Those pictures are definitely to come as well. Thank you everyone for your love, support, and patience!Its been our wonderful family and friends who have seen us through this rough start to 2013 and we are grateful for such wonderful people in our lives

A little more exciting than last time...

Well as promised I would give more exciting news this time... Many of you noticed that our blog is called "Crosland Bunch". I named it that to plan ahead of coarse and its now official, we will be a "bunch" in January 2013, somewhere around the 29th. Yes we are expecting our first little bundle of joy! I am 21 weeks right now. This is one of the reasons I won't be posting my blog posts on facebook for a while... too many people on facebook who have no personal ties to us. For those who may wonder, I was sick until about 15 weeks but I have felt fantastic since. I am finally getting a belly for the first time in my entire life. I would post a recent picture but we don't have one so you will just have to wait. I just look awkward enough for people to wonder if I am pregnant. If someone however does ask, I will have some fun with it at first. I will put on a straight face and say "actually I have a liver disease that causes swelling...is it really that noticeable?". I will let you all no how it goes. You can judge me if you want but I have never had a belly before so I am going to enjoy it while I can. For those of you who have kids (or even those who just have good ideas), which baby products would you suggest I need? I have an idea of what I think I will need but some advice would be helpful...please leave your suggestions below. Until next time...

Turkeys

My posts are getting fewer and far between. And I am sure you are all just dying to see whats going on with the Croslands. Well life is still busy. I don't know with what anymore. We have still made time for plenty of fun of course! We have gone hiking and camping a few times this summer. I think a real vacation in due though. Any ideas on cheap places to vacation, preferably close by? Wow I feel like there really isn't anything to report on... are we really that boring? Oh! We have 5,000 turkeys! Well, had. some of them have passed away. They are all boy turkeys. They are mean now and soon will jump up on you and attack you when you go in the shed. I told Jonathan its all up to him now. I told him he should dress up like a giant turkey so they won't want to mess with him. He didn't like that idea. Nor did he like the suit made of pillows. I was just trying to help. I got food poisoning twice from Arby's. The first time was April. I had never been that sick in my life. I thought it was just the Nephi Arby's because, well, its Nephi. I then went to the Provo Arby's and got sick again. Eat at your own risk. Ok, I guess we are that boring. The best I could come up with was turkeys and food poisoning. I promise to have something a little more exciting next time... Until then I will try to persuade you to buy a Norbest turkey. It might be one of ours! If its the best turkey you have ever tasted then its probably one of ours. If it tastes like regular turkey then its probably from some other farmer. Take the chance. No pictures today... too lazy to upload them.

One Whole Year

When I was so busy in nursing school I repeatedly thought to myself "I certainly won't be this busy when I am done with school". Ha. Somehow there are still not enough hours in the day to do everything I want/need to do. Work has definitely kept me busy. I have been covering Utah county for the company and was the only nurse for a while. It was a little crazy but I made it. Jonathan finished his semester and did great! He is looking for opportunities to shadow physical therapists this summer. We are working on possibly doing a little turkey farming on the side. Can you believe we have been married a little over a year? The first year went by so fast and was so wonderful. We have made a lot of good memories and there are plenty more to come! We had a quiet 1st anniversary. It was Sunday so we enjoyed a nice candle-lit dinner. We then went for a walk around the Provo Temple grounds.

For date night last week we bought a cheap $10 tabletop BBQ grill and went to the park to have a picnic. Long story short... the steak didn't cook, our food was fumigated with lighter fluid and our string cheese was bad. After all was said and done, almost nothing went the way we planned but it still turned out to be a blast! We were able to laugh it off and it became even more funny as things continued to go wrong! It was such a good feeling to know I was with my best friend and no matter what happened we could find the humor.

We brought my little sister Ellie down to the farm a few weekends ago. She walked in the shed with all the thousands of baby turkeys and said "I am going to name them all!" She made a good attempt too. She was entertained for a couple hours with catching all the turkeys and naming them while we worked.

For Easter weekend we went to Moroni. We took our niece to the Moroni Easter egg hunt. Let me tell you folks, the small towns know how to do it. That was the best Easter egg hunt I had ever seen! There were bigger and better prizes and doughnuts for all the adults! I may have enjoyed it more than my niece...

Here are some more pictures from the last little while... Provo Temple right after snow storm.

She loves her uncle!

Beautiful full moon down on Jonathan's Parents property. I have a new camera and wanted to try to get a cool shot.

ATV ride

just the 2 of us

Hope all is well with all of you!

we fell off the face of the earth

I can't believe it has been over 3 months since our last post! I was so good at first and then I failed you all.
We have actually been quite busy. between school for Jonathan, my job, and I'm not really sure what else... well it seemed like a lot until I just typed it. Our Christmas tree is still up actually. I just tell people I am going for a record (last year it was up till the end of February- it only came down because I moved). It wouldn't be so bad if it was a fake tree. but its real, and its dry. Hasn't been watered in about a month. I'm afraid it will disintegrate when I do start to take the ornaments and lights off.
Life has been good. As I said before, Jonathan has been busy with school. he is taking anatomy, psychology, and chemistry. Not sure if I mentioned before that he is restarting and going to be a physical therapist. I am just glad its not me.
We have been living in our new apt for about 6 months now and it has been nice. I have seen maybe five spiders and they have all been too small to scare me. We get some weird smells but that comes with an old apartment I guess. Otherwise its been nice! We have everything we need.
We are working hard and enjoying where we are in our life right now. There is so much to find joy in but we sometimes get so caught up in the future and how great we think it will be that we forget to find the beauty of the present. I hear people say things all the time like "I'll be happy when I am done with school" or I'll be happy when I get that promotion or when I get married, ect". Although I will be happy when Jonathan is finished with school that does not negate my happiness now. We should enjoy the stages we are presently in. When we are busy looking forward to "when we'll really be happy" we miss out on whats right in front of us. The small moments are what matter most and will bring us the most joy in our lives. Being able to find joy in the journey is the difference between a person who is happy and a person who is not. Bad things happen and its okay to feel sorrow when those times come. But we can still find joy and peace even in those times. We can also choose to laugh at the more insignificant troubles. I still don't know how to put movies on my blog so I will just highly encourage you to Youtube it. It is called "Moments that Matter Most". It is done by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (under Mormon messages).
We hope all is well with you!

where have we been?

Well its been a while so there is quite a bit of catching up to do...
In September we went to Virginia to visit Jonathan's brother and his family. Our nephew was getting baptized so that was the reason we went when we did. It was absolutely beautiful out there! I fell in love with it. We went to Washington DC a couple of the days and even got to visit the DC temple. We were surprised at how cranky everyone in DC was. Even the tour guides and customer service people who you would think would be kind were quite mean. It was neat to see all of the sites though. My favorite part of DC was probably t he Lincoln memorial. He is one of my favorite people and the sunset there was beautiful. The pictures are all below. We also visited UVA campus. There is so much history behind everything there.
We celebrated both our birthdays this October. Jonathan brought me to dinner and cleaned the house and even made me a cake for my birthday. I got him a cat for his. Neither of us actually like cats but this little kitten came up to me when I was in Spanish Fork seeing a patient. It was snowing and the poor thing was shivering and wet and tried to climb up my leg. I couldn't find an owner so I brought it home and put an ad on KSL classifieds to find it's owner. I will admit it was cute but it was quite the little pest. We named him Pedro. We found a home for it and that will certainly be the last time I try to "save" a kitten.
We had a lot of fun dressing up for our ward Halloween party on Friday. I love Halloween and I have been planning our costumes since July! I decided we would be the children from the movie "Up" (Carl and Ellie). Mainly cause I like the idea of wearing overalls and blacking out my tooth. I am already thinking of next years costumes...
Life has been so good. We are just enjoying this stage of life and working on planning for the future. We are still not sure where we will be the next few years but that is what makes it so exciting. There are many good times and hard times ahead and I am grateful to have such a wonderful spouse with whom I can face it all.
white house

Capitol Hill

monument at sunset

honest Abe

DC temple

Hiking Crabtree falls

Jonathan's Birthday

My birthday

Halloween!!!

And for laughs...

Life on the Farm

I always wondered what it would be like to be a farmer's wife... now I know :) Having a farm is extremely hard work. It often requires a lot more than a normal city 9-5 job. It is neat to see how it all works though. I have gained a greater respect for farmer's and their hard work since helping out on the farm. It certainly builds character. And muscles.

Date Night

We have had a fun and interesting night tonight. I planned to surprise Jonathan by going to see John Schmidt in concert for our date night this week. We were working on the farm today though and got held up so we didn't make it to the concert. Jonathan wanted to make it up to me by taking me to the Olive Garden for dinner. We usually get a "tour of Italy" to share - which has quite a bit of food and is a little bit more expensive but we just get one and it evens out to about $8 each. Well we ordered as we usually do and asked for two plates. When the waitress came she had two plates all right, but both plates were full of food. I think the looks on our faces were enough for the waitress to know something was up. We were so surprised and we didn't know what to say! All I could say was "uh huh" when she asked if I wanted cheese on it. We just looked at each other and back at her... we felt bad saying anything. when she walked off we just started laughing and adding up the cost of our meal. The whole time we were just laughing and saying how the cost of our meal was going to equal our food budget for the week. When she brought us our check we noticed we were only charged for one meal...so we asked her about it and she said they just separated it between the 2 plates (this was a meal that is hard to separate and it looked like there was a full amount on each plate). As we started to leave we noticed that the waitress station was right next to us...which meant she probably heard us saying all those things! It was so embarassing! It was really funny though. As we drove away we looked out the window and saw an old, white, "beer-bellied" man sitting on a bicycle in a speedo!just chillin on the side of the road... we had a good laugh about that one too. It turned out to be a fun date :)

sacrifice.

We are finally all moved into our new apartment! It was a crazy week but we survived and with sense of humor intact. Like when we were putting stuff away and Jonathan found an almost empty can of my shaving cream... he thought it was air freshener and sprayed it across our living room floor! We also discovered that the fire alarm will go off anytime we use the oven. It is a gas stove too and I now understand the meaning behind the saying "slaving over a hot stove all day". It will take some getting used to the new place but I think we will find it to be cozy.

adventures of newlyweds

We are moving! Reason #1- please see above picture. Although there are other reasons, I feel the above pic gives enough justice. We will still be in the same complex but we will be in a smaller apartment on a higher floor.
We have had so much going on and it has been a blast getting through it all! We have been busy making decisions...like how and what to eat on a newlywed budget...

Hey 3 bucks for 30 meals is pretty good. pretty unhealthy, but pretty good.
We have also been deciding whether to go back to school or not, to move, and to switch jobs or not. It is wonderful to have someone by your side to make these decisions.
We went to the park on Saturday and had a picnic, started planning our lesson for Sunday, slept, and played frisbee. It was a lazy day but very needed in our crazy schedule. Lack of money can be a cause of stress on a marriage but I say it can also be a means of strengthening a marriage- if you'll let it. During these years when money is limited we learn how to be creative and how to work together. We try to have a date night every week and we each take turns planning them. Sometimes we just go for a bike/longboard ride and come home and watch a movie. One time we gathered a bunch of our food storage and had a competition to see who could make the best meal. Jonathan's meal- scrambled egg, corn, plain pasta, and cheddar cheese. I made bread sticks which turned out but the pasta salad not so much. These things don't cost money and experiences like this will turn into fond memories in later years. I'm sure we will also be able to look back at our first apartment and the mold, abnormally large spiders, ants, and water problems and laugh. I love what Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin said about finding humor in life: "every life has peaks and shadows and times when it seems that the birds don’t sing and bells don’t ring. Yet in spite of discouragement and adversity, those who are happiest seem to have a way of learning from difficult times, becoming stronger, wiser, and happier as a result...The next time you’re tempted to groan, you might try to laugh instead. It will extend your life and make the lives of all those around you more enjoyable."
(I will put the link to a video with an excerpt of his talk on the picture of us in the top left of the blog). I know that things happen that are not easy to laugh about and there are certainly times when it is even reasonable to cry, but there are also times when its okay to laugh and yet we react with feelings of anger, sadness, or being annoyed. If we view these experiences more "lightheartedly" then there would be less friction and tension between those we are around and more happiness and humor in our lives. Let's enjoy the journey!

recent happenings

I have spent thousands of dollars and several years to obtain a small piece of paper and today, it came in the mail! (Its my RN license in case you were wondering). I took my boards last Thursday and found out on Monday that I passed. It is such a relief to be done. No more home work, no more books, no more teachers crooked looks! A little childish, I know, but I've waited a long time to say that. If you know of anyone who needs Weber State Nursing textbooks let me know. I'll sell them at a great price.
We went to a friends house for a game night the other night and accidentally locked ourselves out of our apt. Luckily we had an open window so we took the screen out and climbed through. It was a good laugh.
Our contract for our apt will end mid August and we are supposed to tell them by Saturday if we are going to renew. We have no idea what we are doing yet. We are looking for possible apt anywhere from Lindon to Payson... if any of you know of anything affordable let us know! We like the apt we're in now but we kind of don't like the mold.
Well we hope all is well with all of you!

Jonathan on fourwheeler at Sand Dunes

nothing but fun

Well life has been busy lately. We had a surprise luau birthday party for Jonathan's sister Karen a couple weeks ago, hence the reason Jonathan is in a grass skirt in the above picture. He is such a stud!
Now that I am finished with school we are enjoying all the free time we have! We went to the sand dunes with Jonathan's family this last weekend. We also went to see the movie 17 Miracles...so good. We will be going out of town again this weekend and then we have a BBQ and parade with my family the next weekend and a family reunion up in Bear Lake that same weekend. I love not working on the weekends! I didn't know life could be this good. We hope everyone is doing well!

Mold.

Mold is growing on our carpet. By mold I mean the fuzzy green mold that could potentially start breathing at any moment. There is a leak in our apartment and the maintenance man cannot figure out what is leaking. They said it might take a couple days to finish... or start.
I have started my new job and am loving it. Its a challenge to learn everything but I am sure I will get the hang of it. I was visiting another nurse's patient today and I was having trouble finding the house (surprising, I know). So I called the nurse and asked her for help in finding it and all she told me was that it was between 4400 south and 5000 south. Thank you. I will be sure to bring the GPS next time.
Jonathan has been down in Moroni taking care of the farm while his family is away. But no worries... the neighbors have been feeding me. He loves the farm though and he is such a big help to his parents.
We are enjoying life. Still working on the online business and getting ready to take the nursing boards. stay tuned...

Wedding pics and a job!

Well I finally landed a job! It was feast or famine. At first I couldn't get anything. Now I am actually turning down jobs. They hired me on at Access home health and I am so excited! In other news, we have our wedding pictures back!!! They look amazing! Thank you to Marvell (Vellvet Images Photography)! We can finally take the pictures that come in the picture frames out and put ours in! We are settling into our apartment just fine. We have the best neighbors! They invite us to dinner and they bring us food all the time! I think they have noticed how skinny we both are so they must think we are starving :) We certainly are not complaining.