Happy Anniversary!

We celebrated our 4th anniversary on July 17th. I had to work, but Jason surprised me with flowers and a picnic lunch by the Provo River. I was very surprised since I was planning to have lunch with another friend from my ward and Jason showed up instead. He set the whole thing up and asked my friend to invite me to lunch that day so I wouldn't suspect anything!

Four years has flown by quickly. I'm so grateful to be blessed with such a loving and kind husband. We've already been through lots of ups and downs but I'm glad that we're together on this ride called life. I can't imagine life without him!

Rogers Reunion 2012

Hooray for family! My out-of-state siblings met up with the rest of us at a cabin in Heber City for a Rogers Reunion. My parents were kind enough to rent a large enough cabin for all of us so we could get some adult time after the kids went to bed. Friday the girls spent some quality time at the outlets in Park City and that afternoon we all rode on the Heber Valley Railroad. Normally the tickets are pretty expensive, but when our home teacher found out we were going, he volunteered to get us a MUCH better deal since he happens to work there. We were very appreciative to say the least. It was a perfect day to go and the canyon was beautiful.

Saturday we went to the Olympic Park in Park City. I had never been there before, but it was a really cool place to go. We watched the athletes training on the ski jumps and walked around the museum. Then most of us rode on the Alpine Slide. I had low expectations for the slide, but it was much better than I expected. The only bad thing was that it happened to be pretty windy and chilly outside that day so I look forward to going again on a sunny, warm day. Despite the cold evenings, we enjoyed the beautiful view of the stars at the cabin. I bought the Star Walk app for my iPad that allows you to easily see and identify the constellations and stars in the sky in real time. It still amazes me what we can do with technology these days!

Sunday all 25 of us invaded one of the nearby wards to attend church together. My mom attended Primary with the CTR 5 class since I have 5 nieces and nephews that age! After church my cousin and her husband drove up to the cabin to take some family pictures. They turned out great!

Monday came too soon and our time at the cabin was over. Fortunately Melody and Brandon came over to our apartment afterwards and spent the day with us. We enjoyed talking, going to the park, throwing the frisbee, and playing games together. Brandon just finished medical school in Missouri and starts his residency program in Nevada tomorrow so I'm glad they'll be a little closer to Utah now.

I'm already looking forward to our next reunion.

New Stuff

Some camp outside and some camp inside. You can tell what type of people we are.

Since we don't have much new to report, you can also see our new purchases: a brown sofa cover and a $130 area rug that we bought for $11. The tent, air mattress, and sleeping bags are also new. We decided to test them out before our ward camp out in a couple of weekends. They passed the test so we are ready to go. For some reason, summer doesn't seem like summer without at least one camp out.

May Day

We finally got all the boxes sorted and stored away. It's nice not to see anymore cardboard laying around. Jason finished his Calculus II and Economics class at the BYU Salt Lake Center and started two stats classes Spring term at BYU Provo. My new job is going well. It's still a little slow for me sometimes, but I really enjoy the people I work with. I think that alone makes it better....not to mention that it's located next to the Provo river and I can walk as far as I want along the river during my lunch break.

The building I currently work in.

My department is moving to this new building down the road in a couple weeks.

The Provo River next to our building where I walk during my lunch break.

My office cube at the current building

Building our new shelves from IKEA

Finished shelves in our spare bedroom

I was rudely awaken in the middle of the night this week by a low battery on the fire alarm in our bedroom. After waking up enough to realize what it was, I kindly shook Jason until he was awake enough to fix it. :) We successfully got rid of the annoying beeping sound every 15 seconds by taking the battery out....that is, until we turned off the light and laid down again. Fortunately, we happened to have a 9V battery and I even remembered where it was. Several minutes of annoying beeping later we really solved the problem and went back to bed. I'm glad that when Jason thinks something is ridiculous he usually laughs instead of getting mad, so we had a good laugh before we fell back asleep.


Thanks to all those who have already visited us at our new apartment. Visitors are always welcome!

Erica Cooper, who I worked with and carpooled with for more than a year at Allen Comm

My nephews James and Grant. I think they love my iPad more than me :)

My cute nieces Amelia and Lillian

A Month of Changes

Playing games with Seth and Cassie

Jason with his Deacons

Happy Easter! It's hard to believe that it's already Easter, but I'm really grateful for the warm weather and the beautiful Spring flowers. This is my favorite time of the year and I love to walk around outside just to see the trees and flowers.

I am officially an Instructional Designer at Imagine Learning now. I really like it! I gave my two weeks notice to my previous job on Feb. 17. They didn't want me to go and counter-offered a better salary to try to keep me, but I knew Imagine Learning would be a better fit for me so the extra money wasn't very tempting. Unfortunately, since I decided to leave anyway, the management didn't give me the fondest of farewells...but, oh well. I have a lot of respect for many of the people that work there and wish them the best.

I took off March 5th and 6th before starting at Imagine Learning. It was nice to take a couple days off and relax. I spent a lot of time organizing and starting to pack since Jason and I decided to looked for apartments closer to my new job in Provo.

I really like my new job at Imagine Learning. They have made me feel welcome and are great and easy to work with. I already knew a couple people from from graduate program at BYU so I had instant friends. I enjoy the more relaxed atmosphere and a company that truly shows their appreciation to their employees. I've helped with lots of different things in my first month, but I haven't had a project that has truly been mine. Things are not quite as efficient as I'm used to and I keep asking "Why do we do it like that?" The company has grown large very quickly in the past 6 months so they are still working out the kinks in their processes. My managers think I  have good ideas, so hopefully some of them will start happening. Something that I've been working on most recently is writing new books for the literacy program. It's kind of fun and tricky to write texts appropriate for kindergarten and first grade with a limited vocabulary so that it's readable. I've already written several that have been approved and the artists are amazing and will make it look and feel like a published book, but unfortunately the Development Team is a year behind curriculum design so I probably won't see it in its finished form for many months.

During the first few weeks of March we spent a lot of time looking for apartments, especially Jason. We found one we liked in a great location and moved to Orem the 31st of March. We really enjoyed our apartment in Sandy and would have stayed longer but I really didn't want to commute every day. Even during the two weeks I had to commute, I averaged an hour and a half in the car a day. That's a lot of gasoline and a lot of time in the car. One day I got stuck right behind a semi-truck that rolled and blocked all the lanes. It took me 2 hours to get to work that day. We're grateful for the people in our ward and all their kindness to us.

We were very grateful to Stuart P. for his help as well as our home teacher Nate G. for lending us his truck, trailer, and strong muscles

We were also grateful for Jason's parents and my parents + Keith for their help moving

Enjoying a doughnut break after all their hard work loading boxes

We had plenty of help and even more offers to help us move on the 31st. We didn't want to take people away from conference so I took Friday off and packed all day so we would be ready early Saturday morning. We started loading in Sandy at 7:00am and finished unloading in Orem in less than 3 hours. We are still in the process of making our new apartment feel like home. We really like the fireplace, the dishwasher, and larger refrigerator, washer, and dryer. We made a big trip to IKEA yesterday and miraculously fit everything we bought in our little Hyundai Elantra. If anything would have been a couple inches longer or a couple inches thicker we would have been out of luck. I already put together the bathroom organizer yesterday and it's nice to have the extra storage in the bathroom.

The front of the house

Our basement apartment entrance

Our awesome moving helpers

Kitchen (minus the couch)

Living room (minus the couches and rug)

We attended our new ward for the first time today and the people were very welcoming and friendly. The best thing about living here is the location. I'm only 5 minutes from my work and we're close to the shopping center, BYU, and the freeway. As soon as Jason finishes his classes in Salt Lake next week he'll start taking classes at BYU and won't have to commute in the opposite direction.

Building the bathroom cabinet

Finished bathroom cabinet plus new washer and dryer

 

Lost a Ring, Found a Job

About a year and a half ago I wrote a blog post with a similar title about losing a contact lens and finding my current job at Allen Communications. I don't know what the connection is between losing things and finding jobs, but we've just experienced another incident.

Losing a Ring
About two weeks ago I looked down at my hand as I was putting on my coat to leave work and realized I didn't have my wedding ring on. I was pretty sure I had put it on that morning but I wasn't positive. Jason and my friend Erica were waiting for me to carpool home and I didn't want them to have to wait for me so I left work hoping to find my ring in my ring box when I got home. Well, I worried most of the way home and hurried to my ring box hoping to find my ring. It was not there, which meant only one thing--I had lost it at work.

I called my project manager on her cell phone hoping she would still be at work. She was driving home but gave me the office number of another designer, Heather, she thought might still be there. By this time it was about 5:30. I called Heather and was very relieved to hear her voice at the other end of the line. I quickly told her about my situation and asked if she would please look around my cubicle to see if she could see my ring anywhere. I waited on the line while she checked. She came back a few minutes later only to report that she couldn't find it anywhere around my desk, on the floor, in the garbage, etc. She said she would quickly check the bathroom and the break room just in case. Again I waited, hoping and praying she would find it somewhere. A few minutes later she came back on the line and said, "Julie, you are never going to guess where I found your ring....."  "Where," I said. "In the bathroom garbage can!" she replied.

Apparently after I had washed my hands a few hours earlier, my ring had slipped off while I was drying my hands and I had thrown it away! If Heather had not have found it right then, that garbage can would have been emptied about two hours later by the nightly janitorial crew. What a blessing! I was so grateful for such a quick and miraculous recovery of my wedding ring, a gift that would be very difficult and costly to replace.

Finding a Job
Apparently sometimes you find things even when you're not looking for them. I heard about a job where one of my former co-workers worked. She has since had a baby and quit working, but she had some really positive things to say about it. Anyway I decided to look into it. The more I learned about the company, the more I liked it. Eventually I applied to an Instructional Design position. I had three interviews in about three weeks and then after waiting for what seemed like an eternity, I was officially offered the job. The company is called Imagine Learning and is located in North Provo near the mouth of Provo Canyon. One good description of the company can be found on their website, it says:

"Imagine Learning is your language and literacy solution, providing award-winning educational software to hundreds of thousands of students in schools across the United States and around the world. Students receive one-on-one instruction through thousands of engaging activities specifically designed to meet their individual needs and provide real results."

So instead of focusing on corporate training I would be working on designing online literacy activities for struggling readers generally K-6th grade. Since my background is in elementary education, I feel like it's a better fit for my skills and interests. I've heard a lot of good things about the company and their culture. I'm also excited about getting a raise and better benefits. All around it just seems to be a good choice to change jobs.


I plan to accept the offer on Tuesday and will then start working in Provo the first full week of March. With changing jobs it's likely that we will also move as well. Jason is currently taking classes at the BYU Salt Lake Center but plans to take classes in Provo during Spring and Summer. If we're both going to be commuting to Provo we figure we might as well live there. We won't move until at least the end of April and not until we find another place to live that we really like. 


This change is exciting and scary at the same time, but I believe it is a blessing for us in many ways. It will be interesting to see what is in store for us in Provo.

Celebrating Birthdays

Birthday presents from Jason. He used an a la carte method this year where I got to up-wrap several gifts and choose which ones I wanted to keep. The necklace I'm wearing is from Melody. Thanks Melody!

Jason brought this beautiful lily to me at work and took me out to lunch. I enjoyed see the flower all week. The stargazer lily is one of my absolute favorites.

We had a fun dinner at Tucanos for Jason's birthday and ate some yummy, yummy food. Afterwards we met my parents at the Conference Center to see a Young Ambassadors concert. Funny enough, Jason's parents happened to go to the same concert that night as well.

Happy birthday to Jason!