Thanks Momma DaNell!

We loved having you here!!

Being the amazing seamstress that she is, she whipped out a bunch of baby room items, and a cute new valance and bed skirt for our room while she was here. Above is a picture of the baby's curtain (glued to a modified set of blinds - love pinterest) and valance. The bed skirt and bumper pads are made out of the same material. Super excited to get the room painted and the crib done so we can put it all together. I think it will look super oober cute.

Also, here is our not hot pink basement with side bathroom... In case you were dying to see it.






Stupid couch

Um.. here is our kitchen and "main room" that is so awkward that we don't know what to do with it. I don't like this level.... nothing works and we don't have the right furniture and the kitchen was so not thought out when it was built. BUT... it does the job, so I'm content. Maybe someday we will figure it out and make it look nice and usable.



I have never taken pictures of upstairs. Its just two bedrooms with a bathroom in the middle. Once we get it all organized with cute little baby stuff, we will take pictures.

Also, we survived the STORM (capitalization for scariness effect) Ok, it wasn't that bad, but it was a little scary. We realized it was going to be bad when the locals (the locals that usually don't worry much about storm warnings) are checking the weather on their phones every 5 minutes. We were in Wichita for a birthing class. They ended it early so everyone could get home before it got bad.... and nobody was getting anything out of it the last hour because they were nervously looking out the window. Anyway, pretty much everything missed us. Closest tornado was in Hesston, about 10 miles away but it didn't do much. And, no hail...no flooding... just lots of crazy lightning and wind. Super thankful for those smart people that watch weather patterns and can warn people, and those people, like our ward member, who stay up all night driving around watching and reporting tornadoes and then fight house fires from lightning. Do these people get enough credit? They are amazing. So normally Kansas gets like 130 tornadoes a year....they got 99 in one night. That means we're done right? :)

Well life is still good in Kansas! We are very blessed!

Love me some Easter weekend

Projects project projects.... that's the name of the game in the Glade house right now.

Also, we got a new camera. YAY! I'm going to enjoy documenting our life much more now.

I made a purse (no picture yet) I like it, but it was definitely a learning purse. It took me forever, but I loved working on it.

Last week we watched General Conference, which was amazing by the way, and I started a reversible blanket for our baby boy and grew a bigger belly while Mark modeled the crib.

Friday we started a garden... in our tiny little apartment porch.

Mark got free pallets and wood and we made them into planter boxes. We are very proud.

And we filled them with free dirt from a ward members well fertilized plot. Yay! They also fed us dinner that night.

These are our starts. We are going to try to start all of them inside. I hope it works.... neither of us are gardeners, but we want to be.

Saturday Mark cut out all the beautiful oak for the crib while Cassie went baby shopping with some girlies from the ward and got all these cute clothes. (no pic of the wood yet) Then we ate with a family in the ward.

Tool pajamas.... so adorable. He will also have a cute little monkey blanket that I didn't get pictured.

Sunday we took it easy, worked on the garden a little more, read about our Savior and gained even more appreciation for His atonement, walked around and pictured the arboretum, and had dinner with a family in the ward.

Wild turtles... awesome

Notice we didn't eat dinner at our house at all this weekend. Love this ward.

Also, I love my new camera.... and I really love Mark. He is amazing.

Some things we have learned in Kansas

Mark and I put together a little list of some things we have learned in Kansas, or just funny things. Maybe we will keep adding to it and it will be a fun little list to look back on and laugh someday.

• Kansas state government is about 10 years behind everyone else.
• Make sure you drive down the correct long driveway when going to dinner at your friendly ward members house, or some farmer might drive up with a shotgun hanging out the window pointed at your face.
• Only open one door at a time or else everything inside your car will blow away.
• They don't cater to pregnant woman with clothing here like they do in Utah, basically there is one option, and it's in Wichita.
• Cops will pull you over for buckling your seat belt in your own housing complex parking lot....because your car was already in gear.
• People ask about your religion by asking the location of your church, because there are so many different churches in the area.
• We live on a hill! Don't get too excited, its the only one in Newton and probably wouldn't pass the hill test in Utah.
• Besides the man with the shotgun, people are really friendly.
• Warsh means wash.
• Mennonite people are amazingly friendly and great cooks, but they absolutely hate our missionaries. Poor guys
• Guns guns guns and more guns. Everybody loves their guns. Every door has a little no guns sign on it.
• People will pawn anything.... It's also fun to be friends with pawn shop owners. :)
• Though AGCO employs so many people in the area, they remain religiously devoted to John Deere. Which is ok because AGCO mostly sells overseas.
• The odds of seeing a tornado... or actually being hit by one are very very very incredibly slim. But the weather does take an obvious turn... and its kinda creepy, super cool but kinda creepy. Can't wait to see more crazy weather.
• Mark apparently looks a lot more like jimmer than we thought. Aside from being called jimmer at church, mark also has the name of Kevin. (because one of our friends couldnt remember his name and kept calling him kevin) The kids just can't seem to let it go and are determined to rename him.
• You dont know flat until you haven really experienced flat...and flat is so much more flat that you could ever imagine it to be.
• Kansas is really pretty in the Spring. :)

Awe.... we could go on forever. Its been quite the adventure. Sometimes it feels just like home, sometimes it feels like we are in a foreign country. We went out for a picnic the other day. I tried to take some pictures of the fields..... a camera just can't quite capture the splendor. It really is amazing. Here are some pictures I got before a bug flew down my shirt.





I'm sorry, someday I will have a nicer camera. As you can tell, its flat.....woah really?! Kansas is flat? Yes its flat, just look at the pictures again. Anywhere that hasn't been farmed is a little hilly, a little.

Well, we went to a nice park/lake/walking trail/camping/swimming hole area. It was awesome! It will definitely help fulfill our outdoor and camping urges... not completely but it will help. Here is a picture of part of the swimming hole.... then Mark had to save some kid swimming from a goose attack, and then we left.

It was the kid and his friends own fault. Stupid teenagers were pestering the birds and the male attacked. When it went for the first kid it was hilarious. He got under the water enough and dodged him til he got to shore, but the other kid couldn't swim very well and was bleeding pretty good. He could touch just barely but was pretty flustered so Mark was a hero and walked out to help scare off the bird and get him out of the water. Yay for heros! Boo for stupid punks. Geese are not something to play with.... Oh ya that's another thing... there are SOOOO many geese out here. It's awesome to see huge flocks overhead or in the fields. I'm talking thousands.

Kansas is really cool. It's really growing on us. Still not home and still really miss our family, but we really like it and have loved our experiences and our friendships out here.

Thanks Glade family for including us in family dinner!!! We loved it! Even though it made the hormonal pregnant lady cry later because she misses you like crazy and hates seeing the little ones grow from a distance, we loved seeing you. We talked it over last night, and I think we have decided to visit home earlier then planned and both of us want to come home in June, my brother comes home from his mission then too! We will know for sure when it gets closer.... pray for a smooth pregnancy that will let me travel.

Goodbye pink walls

take all your patch jobs with you.

you would look cute as an accent wall in a little girl's room.


but covering a large basement front room?



now that's just over stepping your boundaries.

The brighter side

I'm sick of being sick. Today is like the perfect storm of every pregnancy symptom herefore experienced, but all at once. I would classify it as a very bad day.

Water makes me puke, but somehow pancakes do not. Strange? Everything is strange right now.

My house is nowhere where I want it to be and still needs a lot of work and organization. It doesn't help that I am a walking (more like sitting or laying) pregnant zombie half my days.

I am starting to really miss our families....and the mountains....and the snow.

Mark is leaving me in Kansas... Alone in kansas.... for a week long training.

I still hate the smell of our kitchen.

The brighter side? The lovely brighter side? The continual tender mercies of the Lord side?

- The gospel is true and we can feel the Lords constant guidance.

- We heard our beautiful baby's heart beat yesterday. What a miracle life is. It's unbelievable.

- Mark has a wonderful job making enough that I don't have to jump right into work to further sustain us. I can endure 1st trimester from the comfort of my home.

- We have a couch downstairs... And it will soon be a comfy hangout pad without pink walls.

- The ward here is amazing and are super nice and super welcoming.

- Mark gets to play with tractors and people really like him there.

- I at least have some good days and can eat most food most days.

- There may be no mountains but this place has beautiful sunsets and sunrises everyday.

- There are 50 different churches in Newton. Everyone is so openly religious and loving and don't care if you go to a different church. It is so fun.

- We found an amazing midwife who will see us until we get insurance and will be our support through the whole thing! She also works with an incredible doctor who we will also be seeing.

- Mark met an elementary principle who says she will be looking for my name and can't wait to get me in to substitute.

- BBQ is better, and cheaper, in Kansas.....yummy!

I want to look more toward the brighter side, the happier side. Happier even when it seems like days are being masked by the seemingly bad.

I love that all good comes from our Heavenly Father. Start counting all the good and then you realize how loved you really are. It throws me into a more eternal perspective. I wish I could just constantly have that perspective. Wouldn't life just make so much more sense? Wouldn't our trials seem so manageable and seemingly easy?

Have you ever met someone like that? I have. Am I one of those people? Absolutely not.

Still....I am going to more often strive for that happy, eternal state of mind. I'm going to start by stepping into the brighter side.

A couch tale

11:30 AM January 14, 2012
Mark and Cassie enter a sketchy furniture store on Broadway street in Wichita. (Why is it that Broadway is always the sketchy part of any city?) The store is dim lit, all windows covered, but actually looks pretty nice inside. Mark and Cassie walk around their LARGE assortment of cheap furniture (much of it marked down further because of little scratches or tears.)

12:00 - Cassie falls in love with one of the most expensive pieces there. A nice brown sectional with a reverse-able chaise!

12:15 - Mark is finally convinced. The furniture looks nice and comfortable and was the exact colors they wanted. It will last a long time and will look great in a front room when a larger set is needed for the family.

12:30 - The couch is loaded into the truck by two jolly drunk men who proceed to tell us what a ?@#&*# deal we got and how their boss must be @#%$@!*$# crazy to put the price low and how they were @#$*@$%#^@ going to come to our house to hang out with our bad %#$^@$ sofa. (I don't think I used the symbols right, you get the jist.) They then proceeded to walk to the back for their weed (actual word used) break. Mark and Cassie "Let's just get out of this place, then we will feel better about life."

12:45 - Mark and Cassie leave with their nice new sectional.

1:30 - The beautiful chaise is downstairs and looks amazing! Main sofa is in the door and plans are being made to fit it downstairs.

1:35 - First attempt to fit the couch downstairs...fail. Wall and pleather is slightly scratched, slight frustration is being shown.

1:45 - Second attempt to fit couch turned a different way. More scratches, more dents, more frustration and realization that furniture has never existed downstairs because there is no way to get it in. Hormonal pregnant women runs upstairs in tears. She really wanted the couch downstairs. Logical Mark weighs the options....wants to make wife happy.

2:30 - Decision is made to take only option of getting it downstairs, take the $600 piece of junk apart.

3:00 - Thousands of staples are all pulled and the couch inside is exposed....deliria begins to set in. Everything is funny now, even as they realize how cheap the furniture really is.... Hammer is now taken to the inside supports. Mark and Cassie are amazed at how many large staples were used in the process.
3:15 - The main bottom beam is taken out and the possibility of wiggling the couch around the door frame and down the stairs seems possible and exciting.

3:30 - The couch is completely stuck in the door frame and Mark and Cassie are separated, possibly forever, by a couch.



3:35 - Mark crawls under the couch onto the landing and he and Cassie proceed to push the couch out with all their might. The couch makes one huge budge but now both Mark and Cassie are stuck behind the couch. Mark finds a very small opening below the couch and proceeds to wiggle out while Cassie laughs at the predicament.

3:45 - Couch is finally back upstairs, wall looks unrecognizable, door frame is completely marred, but Mark and Cassie are reunited. Much rejoicing, hugging, and kissing takes place.

4:00 - Pregnant woman will not give up, Mark too has become completely dedicated and couch is taken apart even further.





5:00 - Couch finally, with a few more wall dents, makes its turn and is carried down the stairs. Yeehaw!!! Mark proceeds to put the couch back together and Cassie uses a dremel to cut off every freakin staple on the pieces of wood.

8:00 - Couch is finally reassembled, with less parts and less staples. It is flipped over, cursed at, and left for the night.

January 16, 2012
Mark and Cassie now feel very thankful to have a couch downstairs and are less mad at it. It looks quite nice actually, just ignore the pink walls. It may never make its way out of the house, but at least they can enjoy DOWNSTAIRS for at least the next 11 months.


With dented walls and doors frames and scratched furniture, we are still trying to pinpoint the lesson that we were supposed to learn. Maybe its to always ask the landlord if furniture fits downstairs, or that couches don't come apart very easy, or realizing that you will be stuck in the basement forever can be really frightening, or always measure the door frame BEFORE you go shopping for furniture, or don't buy from shady places with dim lighting..... well, we learned it all and have the scars to prove it.

This is what no homework looks like

It is so nice to just spend the night together....


Also, the sky out here is amazing.


There are lots of parks here! I can't wait until it gets a little warmer and greener....we will definitely be spending time at the parks.

We have arrived

In Kansas my friends. Who would have thought we would end up here? I sure didn't. Once upon a time, about 2 months ago, we printed out a map of the United States and proceeded to mark the places we wouldn't mind living. 2 colors were used in this process, green for the places we would like to live, and red for the areas we definitely wanted to avoid. Kansas was definitely red. But, life tends to be quite the jokester, and here I sit......writing this blog in Kansas.

This place has its own pretty though. It was quite mesmerizing driving through the endless flat farmlands. And, it's so fun to see and hear all the trains!

We drove through a tiny little beat up town called Glade, KS! Meant to be? I think yes.

We have amazing ward members here. They showed up with dinner and strong helping hands on Thursday when we got here. We had everything in the house in 45 min! We are feeling very blessed to already know such wonderful people here.

Our house is great! It's a 3 level condo with two bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a nice big hot pink basement. It definitely was not clean when we walked in but now that we have cleaned the carpets and wiped everything down, I think we are really really going to like it. Our landlord also told us we could paint, so that hot pink downstairs......ya...that will be gone. Who paints a huge basement completely hot pink? Some teenage girl with complete reign of the basement, thats who.

It's almost short sleeve weather here. its a warm winter they say, I'm ok with that.

Well, we are here, we are exhausted, but we are happy and excited for this adventure.

Kansas or bust

Ok....I am going to try blogging again. I figure if we are going to be more than 16 hours away from family and friends, I should do a better job in keeping them updated online.

Also, you notice we changed our blog address again.....I am so indecisive.

I am totally graduated and man does it feel good! When my peers and I were asked how we were to celebrate it was a unanimous answer.... Sleep. Well I slept for 2 days and now I am ready to party it up... But Mark has one more final to study for. But.... Tomorrow at 1:30, we shall party. Hooray for getting bachelors degrees!

IPads are AMAZING... Words just can't express the joy at my finger tips.

Packing is fun when you have a week and a half to do nothing but it. I like getting rid of stuff. It will be nice to be settled for a little while though.... We found a nice 3 level apartment in Kansas for only $25 more than what we are paying for our moldy basement now! And it has....drumroll....a dishwasher!! Aww......dishwashers are nice.