Life is Good!

It has been pretty busy this semester for both Jordan and I working and going to school and trying to spend time together. I am anxious to be done with school and it is starting to show in my attendance to some classes.  It will be nice to be done with school although I don’t like how everything else is up in the air about what happens after I graduate. I hope to be able to stay at my current job, Ventana Student Housing in Orem, but unless they can give me more hours for more pay or I can get another good part time job to go this one I will have to start looking for a different full-time job somewhere close. But we are hoping that  we can stay here because we don’t want to move and we love our nice apartment. A few weeks ago we bought a beautiful big microfiber sectional that has 2 recliners and a chaise and we would hate to have to move somewhere where it doesn’t fit.

We are very happy with life. We love our ward and the friends that we have made in it.  It has been a challenge for both of us to not be able to visit our families more, but we are trying to be responsible and work and save for our future.

It was SO nice to have Tiffany up here for the Fall and I miss having her around and Kimberly close enough to come down and visit often on the weekends. It is hard being away from my family and I have felt more homesick these last few months. We are hoping to be able to go down to California and visit at the beginning of the summer and so that will be fun. It is a challenge to have families that live kind of far away and in opposite directions. It is what I grew up with my grandparents and I hope that our brothers and sisters can live close to us so that our kids can at least know their cousins better than I ever did.

I love him!

Jordan is the best husband ever!  This last Saturday I was pretty stressed with all the things that I had going on in the weekend and really just wanting a break. I had work from 10-2, then we had to clean the 2 office buildings, and then we had stake conference. And since it was Halloween DJ and Ashleigh were going to come over to play games and make fancy, candy, Carmel apples.  I had mentioned the previous evening that I wanted him to help me clean out the room next to ours. It had become the throw room since we switched out our bed, and I could barely walk around in there.  While I was at work he came down to see me in the office and asked what I was stressed about and asked if he could do anything to help me.  He is so cute!  The hard part is that often there is nothing that he can do, because I have the responsibilities and it just gets overwhelming sometimes. I came home from work and he had cleaned the main room, done the dishes, and cleaned out the room next to ours on his own.  And he wasn’t home because he was changing the oil in both of our cars.  What a wonderful man!  He is so willing to help me out when I ask, especially during stressful times.  And at times I don’t even have to ask!  I was so touched by his thoughtfulness.

It has been too long!

It has been about a year since I have written on here and so I thought I would get back to it. I have really slacked off in blogging in the last year. I thought I would make it my New Years resolution but then I figured why wait?

I am on track to graduate April 2010 with a Bachelors in Sociology and am very excited to be almost done. This semester has been one of the busiest. I am constantly writing and revising a paper for my semester projects.   Jordan is planning to start school at UVU in January, but instead of studying construction management he will be studying Business.  He wants to own his own construction company and not have to sub-contract out any workers.  He will need to get a general contractors license (which is not done through a school) and so he will get a little business background to help with that at school.

We are still living in Orem and love living here and love our ward.  I am still working at Ventana Student Housing as an Asst. Manager and I love it!  Jordan has a new job that he got last December ’08 about a month after he lost his previous job (because there was not enough work) with Perks Diamond . He is working about 30+ hours a week so not quite full time but it is such a blessing to both have work and for him to be learning more in his field.

I absolutely love our apartment! We are so blessed to have such a spacious apartment and so we never feel cramped and can have lots of people over for games and gatherings.  I love being able to decorate for holidays in my own place.  I love decorating and making our apartment feel like a home.

We will be staying here in Utah for Thanksgiving and my mom and Jenni are going to come up and spend Thanksgiving with us here at our apartment.  Then for Christmas we will head up to Lovell, WY to visit with Jordan’s family. We are so blessed to have the jobs that we do and so we are able to go for more than a week and with my job being salary to still get some income for that time.

It is so nice to have Tiffany up here in Utah, she is busy a lot with her friends but when we can make time to get together it is nice to have family close. Kimberly is up at BYU-Idaho this semester, but she has come down to visit a few times and it has been nice to work more at our relationship and be a part of her life.

Of course DJ, Ashleigh and Nikki are all down here too and we get together with them usually at least once a week. It is nice to have people to call and invite over to play games or watch movies. We love having them over! Now if Ranee’ and Adam would just move down here then game nights would really get crazy fun!

Jordan is still the best and most amazing husband ever! Practically everyday I am amazed in some way by him and wonder how I got to be so lucky in getting him to marry me.

And the blessings just keep on comin’….

It’s FALL!  The leaves are all changing colors and so took a few pictures!

We just bought a 55” TV! We were looking on ebay and found one that was only $200 and closing in two hours we bid at 13:36:44 PDT and it closed at 13:36:47 PDT. We bid at $400 and against 6 other bidders that bid in the same second we were the highest bidder and got it! It is used but in good condition and has a 30-day warrantee. It is just that time to but I guess! We got a car last week, a Dodge Intrepid 2004 and we love it! It is such a nice car and drives so smooth. I told Jordan that the prophets say to live within your means and we realized we were living a little under our means…hahaha. Well not really. But I told Jordan that if we didn’t get a balcony on our cruise with the money saved we could get a TV, and so we did! We are so happy about our purchases and besides our cruise we don’t plan on any big purchases for a LONG time!

DJ’s old mission companion is going to buy our contract here at Union Square and so we won’t have to worry about that either.  I love my job at Ventana Student Housing. It is just the kind of thing that I enjoy and it will also stretch me a little and help me learn more which I am very excited about!. We are getting so blessed and I like it!!

FINALLY!

After over a month of being here in Provo I have finally found a job!  I am so excited about it!  I will be an assistant manager at an apartment complex in Orem, UT.  It is exactly the kind of job I was looking for that would give me responsibility, be flexible, give me an opportunity to use my skills and learn more. It is at Ventana  Student Housing.  They will provide our living in addition to a monthly compensation.  We won’t be moving there until January and so I will be paid hourly until then.  Jordan and I are so excited for the apartment though.  They are really nice.  They are furnished, there are 4 rooms and 2 bathrooms with a washer, dryer, and dishwasher.  The counters are granite and the bedroom closets are big and there is also a big kitchen pantry.  Take a look at the wedsite and see. http://www.ventanastudenthousing.com/  We feel so blessed.  After not getting a check from Platinum for the summer like we had planned, we had an initial shock then we started to figure out a plan and just had faith it would be ok and it was!! We found out that we would get money from a property we own in Costa Mesa, CA from it being refinanced, then I found this job, then we also found a car yesterday!  I couldn’t be more grateful for all that we have been blessed with.  I am so grateful for Jordan and the support that we have been able to be for each other during out “shock/freak out”.  I couldn’t be happier!

Living in Provo

We’re BACK!!!

It has been quite a while since I have updated our blog. Jordan and DJ are watching the Utah game and so I thought that it is a good time.  We are loving being here in Provo.  It is nice.  Jordan is working with Perks Diamond, a construction company, just like he did last year.  Our apartment is all decorated and I love it!  Our ward is great and we are starting to make some friends which is great.  I am still looking for a good part time job in which I will learn new things and want to stick with the company for a while.  I am loving my classes this semester at BYU. I am taking a full semester of 15 credits and am taking almost all major classes and so I am interested in everything I am learning and that helps. The classes I am taking are: Sociology of Work and Occupations, Sociology of Inequality, Social Theory, Social Methods, and Psych of Gender.

Jordan and I are still happily married and loving life!  I am enjoying life a lot more not being so alone in Chicago. It is nice to be able to be more social with people.  Jordan has loved being able to go to the BYU games and watch them on TV too.  It is always a great time of year for him.  It is a nice time of year for me because of the sweet memories of last year and our first encounters with one another.

This is our apartment: It is already furnished, which is nice. We purchased the coffee table and Jordan spent two days sanding it down and re-finishing it.  It looks really nice! He did a great job! He also fixed our kitchen faucet, toilet pressure, bathroom faucet and shower head, as well as hanging up all our pictures.  He is a great handyman!  I never knew how much I would appreciate it.  It wasn’t on my “husband qualities list” but I sure am glad I got it.

Family Room

Kitchen

Bathroom

Closet- next to bathroom

Bedroom- Our pillows are now black (we have black silk sheets) We also have black curtains above our bed. At the End of our Bed…

Whose closet is whose. haha I wonder….

As the Summer ends in Chicago

LESS THAN TWO WEEKS LEFT!! We are so excited! We are both just very anxious to get out of Chicago and the work that we have here and to get back to UT.

We both did it!! We got our hair cut and you will be able to see it in our pictures in Nauvoo.

We went to Nauvoo about a week ago. We started off the weekend by going to the Chicago temple Friday morning which was a very neat experience we were the only couple there and then there was one other lady so it was very different from the full room I had before. It was a great way to start off the weekend though. Saturday evening I was feeling really sick and went straight to bed after work. Jordan and I were both hopeful that I would feel better by morning so that we could go to Nauvoo as planned. We woke up a little later than we had originally planned but I felt a lot better and so we packed up the car to leave. The drive was nice we had the windows rolled down and it was a nice temperature and the drive was not that bad. Nauvoo was beautiful I loved being able to see the temple and just feel the spirit of the place. It really is neat. I don’t think that I enjoyed it as much as I could have or did the last time. For two reasons before we went a lot of different places and learned a lot of church history and second I didn’t do my homework before and so I had forgotten the significance of some of the places. But Jordan had never been and so he really enjoyed it. It was SO HOT! It really was miserable and so we hurried into air conditioned places as fast as we could. Sunday was my birthday and so Jordan and I went to the pool and we ordered pizza (which is not my favorite but it sounded good at the time). It was an early night and was just relaxing to not have to worry about going to work the next day and just being able to spend it together. Monday we got up at about 9am and got ready to go to our temple session in Nauvoo. It was SO BEAUTIFUL we just had the neatest experience. I loved being able to see all the rooms and I wish we could have peaked our heads in more rooms so that Jordan could see it all like I remember from the Open House. We got a lot of great pictures with our new camera and just had some fun with it. The drive home was miserable it was very hot and I was very crabby and took it out on Jordan and so that was when I decided that we NEEDED A/C for the drive home to WY/UT. I didn’t want to be that cranky and difficult all the way for Jordan…my patience is nil when I am miserable, miserable hot especially! It was a great trip and I am really glad that we took the time to do it while we were out in in Chicago, IL.

New Email…..Hair cut?

Since I am now married I needed to make a new email.  I was thinking about isfayid2 (isfayid “It Sucks Finding A Yahoo ID] is Jordan’s email) but then I thought for Jobs and such a more professional email might be better.  So my new email address is jmsavage08@gmail.com  It was a little hard to actually find one that was not taken.  Jill Meredith is not a common name but Jill Savage is and so it took a little longer but I guess it is not too random.

So I kinda have had this impulse to chop my hair….I would cut it to my shoulders.  What do you think?  I had it that short a little over a year ago and so it grows pretty fast even with trims.  I am just getting a little sick of the long hair and think it might be fun and sassy to have short hair again.  Well I guess we will see if I end up doing it or if I (or you) talk me out of it.

Jordan’s Birthday 7-11-08

So Jordan had quite the experience on his birthday. It was Jordan’s first day in a new area and he called me earlier on in the day and told me that people had called out things to him in the street like, “Hey white boy what are you doin out here in the hood?” All gangster-ish and tough. He also told me that two people had threated to sick their dogs on him. I guess he was in a pretty ghetto area and I was worried but he assured me that he was fine and that I didn’t need to worry about him. That is why it came as such a shock when we called me at 8:45pm to tell me that he had been attacked from behind and his wallet was stolen and he needed me to call and cancel his cards. He told me that a guy came up and tried to choke him from behind and then reached for his wallet. Jordan said that he wasn’t very strong because he was able to grab him from behind his back and pull him around to the front. The guy hit him about 5 times right by his right eye and Jordan told him to stop that he would just give it to him. So he gave him the wallet to play it safe because who knows if this kid had a gun or knife or friends hanging out just around the corner.

Jordan went to the police station to report what happened and didn’t have much luck there because the officer thought he was on drugs or had been drinking. Which of course we all know with Jordan is ridiculous. So Jordan couldn’t prove anything and the guy didn’t trust him and so Jordan just gave up and left without reporting it.

What a great Birthday huh??

We made up for the bad day though! Jordan and I went into downtown Naperville and ate at a late night bar. We shared a nice steak dinner and just had a nice night. The next day I went into work early and and worked 8 hours and when I came home there was a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a card sitting there all nicely on the table. He even had arranged the table chairs around the back of the table so you could more easily see the flowers . I couldn’t figure out when he would have bought them and so I went looking for him and he was hiding around the corner. I was so happy to see him! I love coming home from work and being able to see him! I had another surprise planned for his birthday and so I was able to set up earlier than I had planned. So I had him stay in our room and I laid out the couch cushions and put my old twin sheets on them and lit our candles and turned on Josh Groban music and then had a trail of rose petals I had bought and Reese’s from the bedroom door to the cushions. And then I gave him a massage while he just relaxed. It was nice to do for him because it was not just a quick shoulder rub and he enjoyed it immensely.

The next day we had to attend the earlier session of church because the singles ward wasn’t going to be meeting. So we decided to drive down to Chicago and go to Navy Pier. It was so fun to be able to see the city in the daytime and go on the lake and see the view of the whole city! We went at just the right time because there was a magic show that was right there on the pier and we stopped and watched it. It was a pretty amazing show and we were both amazing and stumped. It was just a fun night and time. I love every moment I have with Jordan and the memories are priceless!

Wedding!

I thought I would put some favs on our blog.