What I have been up to...

This is a senior picture (2003)

And this would be my parents and I at my 2004 graduation from high school.






A couple of weeks after graduation, I traveled the 1800 miles in a van with my family to get to BYU for the summer semester. I have to admit, although I was ecstatic about living on my own, I was nervous about being thrown into a new situation not knowing anyone. Thankfully, I had two awesome roommates (I actually had 3 roommates, unfortunately one didn't like me very much) who calmed my fears within the first week. I lived in the dorms at Heritage Halls (Felt Hall), and had way to much fun.

<--Awesome roommates. We were getting ready for a dance at BYU. I enjoyed myself so much that summer, my grades suffered, oops! That fall I was forced to leave Heritage Halls because the extreme competition between Freshman girls trying to reserve a room there. This was obvious in the wards, there were 3 girls for every guy, oh joy! So with help from my wonderful brother, Jonny, I moved off-campus into an apartment with 3 other girls. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of my roommates at my new apartment, though we did get along great. I'm pretty sure I didn't get to know them very well was because I was gone, a lot. Even though I was terrified of being the girl to get married my freshman year of college, I didn't object to dating, a lot. I'm guessing the reason I completely objected to the thought of getting married my first year at BYU was because of the sarcastic suggestions from adults in my ward back home that this would most definitely be happening to me. Despite the hesitation towards return-missionaries (It was mentioned that these guys were dangerously looking for a wife), I had fun dating and meeting new people. My freshman year, fall semester, while dating someone else; I was introduced to Kade. When I first met him I thought he was cute and nice, but I was dating another person at the time. I am actually grateful I met Kade while I was dating someone else because it allowed me to become friends with him. After forfeiting another guy to the mission field, I started dating Kade near the end of November 2004.
<-- Picture of us when we first starting dating. This was taken at his apartment, where I spent a lot of my time. Most likely the reason I didn't really get to know my roommates. <--- After school, I would go to Kade's and have dinner with him. Because of my lack of cooking skills we resorted to surviving on frozen stir fry. Christmas '04 I went home and spent the holiday with my family. Of course I told my family about Kade, but they were still shocked when I admitted in February that I was pretty sure I was going to marry him.
<-- Opening a present from Mary, a very cute pink skirt (that I still wear) Well, just to make sure I did want to marry this farmer from Winnemucca, Nevada, I spent the summer working for his dad on the farm.
<--This isn't actually the tractor I ran that summer (mine was much more snug), but it's still a picture of me in one.
And we spent most of our free time riding dirt bikes, I mean Kade riding and me attempting to ride. After I survived the summer, all I had to do was wait for the ring! In November 2005, he finally proposed. After coming home late from "work," Kade told me we had to go to Highland because his friend had shot a deer and needed help getting it. So we drove into the mountains near Highland (we were suspiciously close to houses with a sign reading "No Hunting"). When he stopped on the side of the mountain we got out and walked to where we could see the city lights. His proposal was adorable, Christmas lights laid out on the ground reading "Marry me Liz."
So we set the date for April 29th, 2006 in the Salt Lake Temple. I was pleasantly surprised at how the wedding planning went. It was stress free and enjoyable.
<--Our engagement picture used in the announcements. Our photographer was impressed that Kade could hold me piggy back without ruining the picture with a huge vein popping out of his forehead. <--This picture was taken by my dad, my favorite one! The wedding was wonderful , of course. I was blessed with family and friends there. After the wedding we went to West Virginia for the wedding reception. We used the church and decorated the gym with decorations used in a recent wedding there. One of the ladies helping me set up was very grateful I was not a bridezilla. Honestly, I didn't care that much about the decorations, I was too excited for the cruise we were going on!! Well, the reception went well, with nicely arranged decorations. Some of Kade's family even showed up for the reception in West Virginia, after vacationing in New York and Washington D.C. And his mom also put together a Open House for us in Winnemucca, which doubled also ended up being a welcome home party for Kade's brother that just returned from his mission (just missing our wedding).
After the week in West Virginia, we left for our honeymoon, a 7 day Caribbean cruise. This was my first cruise, and Kade's 3rd, i think. Most definitely the best vacation I have ever had, cruising is the way to go. We left from Miami and stopped at Half Moon Cay (Bahamas), St. Thomas, San Juan, and Grand Turk. The first and last islands had breathtaking beaches, beautiful white sands and crystal clear water. St. Thomas and San Juan were more urban, with plenty of places to shop!
<-- This is on the Half Moon Cay. Now you have to admit that it is gorgeous! (Not to mention the hottie on the beach :) After unfortunately having to leave the cruise we went back to Winnemucca where we had found a little pink house the rent (Winnemucca oddly has a number of pink houses). We were very lucky to find a place, Winnemucca is notorious for having extremely long (like a year) waiting lists for rentals. Luckily, the landlords thought we were such a nice young couple. So that summer, we slaved away on the farm. While baling hay (which means sitting in a tractor for 10 hours) I snacked on Oatmeal Creme Pies; not a good idea. After probably gaining about 10 pounds, I have been diligently working my butt off to get my weight back down. And it's not easy when Kade's mom is an amazing cook. Fortunately I have lost 9 of the 10 pounds since then, go me! We were planning on staying in the house for the summer and heading back to Utah to finish up school, but because Kade likes to change his mind (and doesn't really like school) we stayed until December.
During the fall, while Kade and his dad and brothers were away in Colorado on an elk hunting trip, I got to go to BYU-Idaho in Rexburg and see Krista, which was awesome! Even though I missed Kade a ton, I had a great time with Krista and Lauren.




Then, we spent Thanksgiving with Kade's family and Christmas 2006 at my parent's house.
<-- One of the family pictures taken while everyone was together. After Christmas we made the trip with all our stuff to Utah, where we were lucky once again with a rental. Kade's sister was moving into their new condo, so we got their old apartment, and apartment on-site manager job. Although it was annoying dealing with petty complaints and frustration (frustration is more of an understatement) from tenants over internet outages, we did get a discount on rent! We started school once again, BYU for me, UVSC for Kade. While Kade was finishing up his certificate in Diesel mechanics, I was desperately trying to get into the BYU Education program. Reading that dang rejection letter was very disappointing at the time, but I'm glad now I got rejected. If I would have been accepted, we would have had to keep moving back and forth from Winnemucca to Utah until I was done. I was extremely relieved when I realized the small college in Winnemucca had an Elementary Education bachelor's degree and offered all the classes there. While we were in Utah we got to attend Josh's (Kade's brother- in- law) graduation at BYU. It was pretty awesome, but only because President Hinckley showed up, oh and Dick Cheney was there, too. So, after classes ended Kade and I rented a Uhaul and packed all of our new furniture back to Winnemucca.
The apartment we had in UT was unfurnished which forced us to fork up money on one sofa and a mattress, yes we laid it on the ground :), oh and a table. Luckily, when we came back from Christmas in WV we drove up to our apartment late to find a decent dresser with a big sign "Free" next to the dumpster. Actually it was a baby changing table with drawers, but who cares, we didn't have to buy a dresser with the little money we had after Kade's tuition (out of state tuition sucks, gas prices are pennies when compared).




When we got back to Winnemucca it was time for our first anniversary, so we spent the weekend at Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe is pretty awesome, and amazingly gorgeous. The weather was still cold up in the mountains, so we didn't ever swim in the lake, but we did plenty of hiking and site seeing. The picture shows the island with a little house on top. On the shore was a historic house resembling a fort and the informative signs told us that the little house on the island was used by Mrs. of the house to have tea with her friends, hmm... now that's the life.
Well, back in Winnemucca we moved into Kade's parents' basement. We weren't so lucky this time in the Winnemucca rental market. We couldn't find one measly place to rent. But we survived, very well actually, Kade's mom cooked for us almost every night and we didn't have to pay rent! So because renting was not an option, and we had decided to finally settle down in Winnemucca, we started looking for a house to buy. And so began the house hunt. We found out about a great first time home buyers deal in Nevada where you get a killer interest rate and they pay a 4% down payment for you. But the only problem was finding a place in Winnemucca in our budget that wasn't a trailer, and that was and probably still is surprisingly hard to do. But we finally found a house, still being built, that was about 15,000 over our budget. Well, we just worked our butts off until the house was finished so we could put $15,000 down and get financed. You can not believe how excited I was to buy a house. It seemed like every time I would go anywhere I would find someway to detour by our house while it was being built. By the time we had found this house it already looked like this and did look like this almost the whole time we were in escrow. Nothing much changed, but I would still find myself driving by just to see if anything new was done. The house was finally done in September (we were supposed to close in August) 2007 and we were able to move in. Then came the fun part!
I got to buy a bedroom set because all we had was a mattress, and the matching love seat to our sofa we already had. Oh, and Kade convinced me that we needed at least a 42" HD flat screen TV, of course. Well, while in Reno picking out our necessary furniture, we went to Sears to find a TV (even though we had one already).
<--The bed and nightstand of our bedroom set I'm glad Kade didn't go alone to pick out a TV because he would have gotten the 50" ("but it's only a little more!" haha..). We finally left Reno without all the money we had saved up that summer.
<-- The TV, TV stand, and couches Oh, and of course, I had much more to do than decorate a house. While trying to close on our house, I was simultaneously trying to start school again, and was forced into the office of Crawford Farms after the secretary of 13 years decided to switch jobs. Once Kade's dad found out the secretary was quitting soon, he informed me I would be taking her job. I guess that's what happens when you are the only girl working for the farm. So I would say I had a pretty full plate that fall. Oh and of course, Harry Potter book 7 came out in July, which was read in a matter of days (LOVED it, especially the ending :).
I have to admit that I love the new college I'm at. It's called Great Basin College, the main campus is in Elko, with a branch in Winnemucca. The building is even smaller than the elementary schools here, though it does have some architectural interest. The most students I have ever had in one class was about 15, well I guess that's not entirely true. You see, GBC is technologically advanced. Instead of hiring a bunch of different teachers to teach a class in a bunch of different branches, they have satellite classes where there is one teacher for a class that is broadcast to students at several different locations. So, technically I had more students in my classes (only like maybe 10 more) but they weren't physically in my classroom. Because the classes are so small I have actually talked to the teachers, which rarely happened at BYU. Well I have been extremely blessed, because not only is there a college in this remote town, but I have a job where I can work whenever I want (as long as I get the work done), which works splendidly with my school schedule. Not only that, but Nevada lets students substitute teach with a few requirements. So once I get the paperwork in, I could start subbing (I should probably start working on that...). So pretty much I have a great house, have a convenient (though at times boring) job, a place to go to school, and a wonderful husband!
For Thanksgiving 2007, Kade and I flew to WV to be with my family, while we stayed in Winnemucca with Kade's family for Christmas. We even got to chop down our own tree! It was fun even though the tree was kind of deformed. Oh, and the first semester at GBC I received straight A's (that's huge!). I even tolerated going to class, I had awesome teachers and I actually felt like I learned something, with one exception, my math class. Now, I wasn't expecting much from a Math class for Elementary Education majors (I loathe math), but this class was ridiculous. The teacher was very annoying and picky, and the material was what I learned in ninth grade. And what was weird was that most of the people in the class were learning the material for the first time (which involves extensive explanations). I have heard that Nevada is very low in math scores... Thankfully, I survived without going insane (by simply tuning it out).
In January 2008 I started school again for winter semester and received a phone call, after my hard work trying to get credits from BYU to work, telling me that all the credits I had been trying to make work, they were going to accept! So, that meant I could apply for the program and not have to retake a full semester of classes, yippee!! So I applied for the program and after one nerve racking interview I got an acceptance letter, yippee again!! (take that BYU! haha)
Also this past winter Kade's sister had her third baby and we drove up to Omak, Washington to go to the baby blessing. It was fun, with a beautifully landscaped (though very long) drive.
<--This picture is so funny, because not only do we look like the parents, but Kade's face is priceless. Well, these past few months haven't been too eventful. The winter semester of classes went well, the only thing I didn't like was the 7-10Pm class every Tuesday (that's the only time I got to see Kade!). We went to a the World Farm Show Expo in California, where we saw ginormous tractors and this huge cotton picker. We also bought a new car, but only because Kade's brother wanted to buy his truck from him. So Kade sold his truck to him and we bought me a new car. I was planning on something with reasonable gas mileage considering the extreme price of gas these days, like a Corolla. But, no, Kade explained he must have something with some muscle. So we settled for a shiny, black '06 Infiniti G35! (Oh, i don't mind too much..)

Since school has ended I have been working full time in the office and Kade has been working immense hours on the farm (like this week he had a 15 hour day). And we have been slaving away on our house. We have successfully put up the back fence and I have successfully planted a flower garden in the front and a vegetable garden. I'm very proud of my work, even though Kade teases me for how much I get into it. I had no idea I had such a green thumb, you would think after making a few bucks by picking a considerable amount of weeds in my dad's garden growing up, I wouldn't be so enthusiastic about this kind of work.
So that was about 4 years, I can't believe it has been that long, but it has been great!






I thought I would add in the link to the album for the rest of my house pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123617&l=10c56&id=17806428