We're in Business!!!

Good news!!!!!!! Luke got a job!!!!! Hooray! He'll be working at a warehouse in Sandy full time over the summer, and his first day is on Tuesday. Heavenly Father has been so good to us! I'm so grateful that he didn't make us wait any longer. Now we can save, save, save!!!!!!

1 Down, 1 to Go

I got a job!!! It's a receptionist position at an accounting office where I will be allowed to do my homework once I'm finished with all my normal secretarial duties. It's 9am-1pm, and I start tomorrow. I am so excited! It's another perfect job for school, and I once again have to thank my Heavenly Father for working things out so nicely. I did have to rearrange my school schedule so that I had all my classes in the afternoon, but even that went smoothly, and everything's all taken care of and set to go.

Luke is still looking for a job. He has had several interviews, and we're currently waiting to hear back from one. Hopefully something will work out soon. Luckily he's been able to continue working this whole time because his previous job at QuikCheck hasn't found a replacement yet, so they've asked him to work until they do.

Meanwhile, we have continued to make lovely desserts. Here is a picture of the strawberry shortcake we had last night:

Luke has also started playing Star Craft with Caleb or just the computer, and is thoroughly sucked in. Every chance he gets, when he's not looking for jobs or helping me out, he's strategizing and defeating the enemy. Being a recent megafan of Ender's Game, I can understand to a degree. Still, I sometimes have to pull him back to reality so he doesn't end up a complete gamer. It's intense.

10 Things About Andrea

I had to do this for a writing class, but I was so pleased with myself that I decided to publish it on my blog. Ha ha! Enjoy!

My name is Andrea Perkins and there are a few important things to know about me.

1. I am a devout family girl. I love my fam to death, and now that I’m married (for almost a year, woo hoo!) I have eleven more people to add to them.

2. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and believe in every word of it.

3. I am totally into Holistic Health and Healing. Herbs, Energy Healing, Yoga, Pilates, the works.

4. I can’t live without sweets and so I have to restrict myself to one very small helping a day.

5. I love writing and have every intention of finishing several books.

6. I love reading and have finished several books.

7. My interests are ridiculously wide-spread, making it very difficult to pin down a single major, but also making life endlessly interesting.

8. My husband and I are both home-bodies and I am on a crusade to make us more “fun.”

9. I have always been excited to have kids, but around my husband and I’s eighth month of marriage mark I decided I have to have them. Now.

10. I am generally a cheerful person, except for occasional fits of rage when the printer won’t work or the computer loses an entire paper that of course I hadn’t saved yet.

Changes

Wow! Only a few days later and already there's a lot of new stuff to talk about!

First of all, my friend Amanda Stoddard got married to Tim Rowan in the Timpanogos Temple this last Thursday. I'm so happy for them! And I am fully confident they will be happy together. They are perfect for one another.




















Next new thing is that Digi cut several of their employees, including me, so now I too am on the hunt for jobs. It's a little bit scary, but I know that the Lord will take care of us. He has helped us out so much up to this point, we know He won't abandon us now. Perhaps it will turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Who knows? We're both excited to see how it goes, and to experiment with tightening up our financial belts next month--a lot. ;)

Last thing I wanted to talk about was this site called Blurb.com. It's a website that can "slurp" your blog with all your posts and pictures and make it into a book! I thought it would be a great thing for anyone who's not really into scrapbooking, but does like to post faithfully on their blog. You could slurp your blog at the end of each year and have a family album/journal right there! Check it out!

Summer Time!!!!

Finals are over!!!!!!!! I'm so excited I can hardly see straight! As for Luke, his finals will be over next week, and then we shall both be free, Free, FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But to do what, you may ask? Well...

I will be taking 2 online classes this summer. I know, I just finished school and already it's upon me! But it's not too bad, considering that I wouldn't have anything to do at work otherwise. Besides read. Which, admittedly, is precisely my cup of tea. :) Hopefully I'll be able to do a lot of "just for fun" reading this summer, but it will be alongside my classes. And what fun classes they will be! I'm taking a "Writing for children and adolescents" course, and one on Shakespeare. I'm actually very excited for both.

Luke will spend the first portion of this summer (hopefully only a very short one) looking for a new job. He is quitting his current one and moving on at the end of this month. If anyone knows of any job openings, let us know!

Now on to the fun we expect to be participating in!

We have two family reunions/vacations that we will be taking, one with either side of the fam. The first comes in June and will be with the Wright fam in San Diego, California. Hooray for the beach, the ocean, and Disneyland!!!!! The next will be in August with the Perkins fam at Bear Lake. We are excited to spend some time on those beautiful, pristine shores, do some fun activities (kayaking hopefully) and eat some yummy raspberry shakes!

In July I will be spending a week with the young women of our ward up at camp in Heber Valley. The theme is "There's no place like Home," in the tradition of The Wizard of Oz. The scarecrow will represent building a testimony, the tin man is "Got Heart" meaning service, the lion is "Moral Courage," the yellow brick road is the straight and narrow path, Dorothy will represent all the girls on their path to "Home," which is the Temple, and last of all the ruby slippers represent the atonement. Hooray for metaphors and analogies! It should be a lot of fun, I'm really excited.

We are also hoping to host or help out with a barbecue sometime in August with all our friends, go on some fun hikes with friends and family, and spend many other agreeable get togethers for birthdays and other fun occasions.

Overall, our summer looks packed with fun things of all kinds. Thank goodness it's finally here. With the weather being so nice lately, I don't know that we would have made it to our classes for very much longer! Ha ha!

Fall

Well it's been a few months since we've posted. I don't claim to be a faithful blogger, but maybe I will try harder now. It is so much fun to look at everyone's blog to see what is going on with them. Soooooo....these past few months have been great! Luke and I have been submerged into college once more, and this time it's for the long haul. We intend to go straight through summer and everything to finish faster. I will be a full-time student through next Fall, and then only have two more classes to take during Winter 2010 before graduating that spring. Luke is still nailing down career choices and is not sure yet just how long it will be. We are both really enjoying school and how much EASIER it is to be married while going through it!
We have attended several exciting events this semester, including Don Giovanni, the Opera by Mozart. We swore never to attend another opera after we saw it. Not that it was badly done, only that Opera is truly not our style, what with the overt moralizing and arias that go on and on and by the end have only accomplished telling you how sad or glad a person is feeling, emphasizing it to you at least twenty times or more.
No, opera is not our cup of tea. But pumpkin carving is! We went to Sarah and James' house to carve pumpkins before Halloween and it was so much fun! For Halloween itself we went to a party hosted by our good friends Joel and Leah dressed as an astronaut and an alien. The food, entertainment, and conversation were all superb, especially the "Perfectly Chocolate, Chocolate Cake" Luke made. It is divine! It reminisces of the chocolate cake on Matilda. We were first introduced to it at Sarah's house and our life has never been the same! The recipe can be found on the back of a tub of Hershey's baking cocoa, as well as a recipe for "Perfectly Chocolate, Chocolate Frosting." Delicious!
We have also had friends and family over for dinners and even sleepovers, and it has been awesome. We very much enjoy having potlucks and trying new things, such as Caleb's roast or Amanda's pumpkin roll.
When we're not off having grand adventures we are typically enjoying ourselves at our abode. We can hardly imagine a better way to spend a weekend than snuggling up together with popcorn or a treat and popping in a good movie. However, our bliss has been jarred a time or two when the movie was only putting on a facade of quality and turned out to be a villainous fake. So we are starting to be a little more choosy and discriminatory when it comes to film. We've found two classic winners for this weekend though: Groundhog's Day, and The Man Who Knew Too Little. I've never seen Groundhog's Day and Luke hasn't seen The Man Who Knew Too Little, but Bill Murray is a genius of humor, and so we expect to enjoy both of them very much.
That's all for now!
L&A

We're Married!!!

HOORAY!!!!!!!! We finally made it! Together forever! Isn't that fun? Ha!

Well, we've had some fun since we started our adventure together. We went to Aruba on our Honeymoon, and it was awesome!! The island is a desert, with cactus, sagebrush, and dry dirt. But by the hotels it's GORGEOUS! White sand beaches, luscious green palm trees, aquamarine ocean, the works! We were able to do a perfect amount of lounging and adventuring, and it was soooooo nice.

Since we've gotten home we moved into our little basement apartment and it's quite fun. It's lavishly furnished, with old cream couches and rose print carpet, compliments of Carma, our landlady. We finally have internet, which is extremely convenient, and have made friends with the couple living in the other half of Carma's basement. They are our first friends in our new ward, and we are liking it very much. It is a family ward and they are one of the only other newlywed couples, so we're becoming thick as thieves. Ha ha ha! We're also enjoying living so close to Caleb and Lauren, and have played with them several times already and intend to for the rest of forever! It's a good time. :)

Well, that's the update. If anyone is ever down in American Fork, give us a call and come see us! We'd love to have you!