Married Christmas!

We survived our first married Christmas and loved it! I think we were able to spend the same amount of time with both families, which can be hard, but I think we were successful this year. We got practical married type gifts and shared gifts and I was so excited! It was perfect! We shared traditions and made some of our own. :) Santa even found us and our stockings which we opened sitting in camp chairs in front of our unfinished fireplace! It was perfect! Yay for Christmas!

Girl's Camp? Really?!?

We love our calling as Sunbeam teachers! We have the cutest little beamers! They are so loving and cute! Jon especially loves this calling, it's perfect for him. He's so cute with the kiddos. And I love that we get to do it together! So, we had our couple calling and I thought we were good... I shouldn't have thought that.... A few weeks ago the Relief Society Pres. called and asked me to help with the stake women's conference which will be fun! I just get to help invite and get our ward there. I was excited about it because I would meet more people in the ward! Well, I guess I wasn't doing enough because I got another call to meet with the bishopbric... at this point I just thought I was in trouble, and I guess in a sense I sure am!! They asked me to be the YM CAMP DIRECTOR!!!!!!!!!!!! I said yes, but almost cried. And Jon was there with me and almost laughed right out loud.
Ok, for those of you who don't know me very well, let me tell you about my camping experience. My first camp out was with my family when I was 2. It was less than ideal, and was starting to rain, so my Dad said if we could go home, he would buy us a dog. We had Buffy, our cute cocker spaniel for 20 years and never camped again.
From then growing up, our camping was done in condos. I like this kind of camping.
But then I was 12, and I had to go to girl's camp. Sounded like fun and all... ish.
Here's how girl's camp went for me:
One year I was sick. And no offense to the girls I grew up with, but we didn't always get along, especially at camp so it wasn't as enjoyable as it was supposed to be.
One year I had to bring my friend from another ward for reinforcements or I wouldn't go.
One year there were 4 of us that were abandonded and forgotten as we were in a paddle boat on the river, they just forgot about us and left to go to dinner. We didn't get dinner that night.
One year I was almost sent home because I was blamed wrongfully for a snipe hunt gone bad.
I decided not to go anymore so the bishop and the stake YW presidency came to my house to convince it would be "fun"... I didn't go.
The more I think about it, the more unpleasant memories come to mind about girl's camp.
Now why... why me... why now. That's what I'm asking. I know God does things for a reason for sure, but I don't know about this one yet. So please pray for me as I try to figure this out!!! And feel free to laugh at me and with me and hope I make it through July!!!!!

FAMILY PICTURES

Yay for family pictures! We went to Wheeler Farm and it was fun as always. I was pretty excited to get a nice picture taken of Jon and I that wasn't from the wedding. Although I love the wedding pics, we needed some change! :) My mom wanted fall colors and i think they turned out really nice! What can I say?! We are a good lookin family!

The Sibling picture of amazingness!! We decided to break away from the normal face smoosh and try some acrobactics! Luckily it worked for a second, and the photographer had good timing. I thought I was going to die if they all fell, but luckily we all survived and got an amazing picture out of it! My favorite things are the faces! Classic.

The complete family as of now. The last family pic we had was before my mission and left out some cute boys: Brycson, Michael, and Jon. We'll see how long this lasts as a complete pic... Do you think we can go 3 years again? (I'm thinking not)

Christmas Time!
I love Christmas and have been waiting months to decorate our new house. Luckily my cute husband humors me mostly shares in the excitement.
He woke up early one morning and I found him playing on the roof, putting up lights on our house! They are SO cute!
Here's the final product! Green, red, and snowflakes!!!!! Very Festive.

Other than lights my favorite thing about Christmas is the Christmas tree! They make me so happy! We inherited this tree from my Aunt Lisa and it's fiber optic! It actually looks really cool. We come from families of much tradition so we are still trying to figure out what traditions we will have as a new family! So for now, here is our simple starter tree! Ornaments from IKEA, bow from Walmart, and...

Our homemade tree topper! We didn't have a star or an angel, but I had this cool coke bottle so it became our topper! I love it, and Jon's a good sport. :) It's perfect until we are able to add more to our holiday decor.

This is my favorite time of year! I love the music, the snow, the spirit of it all! It just makes my heart happy! And I'm SO excited to share Christmas this year with my little family of Jon and I.

My first hat!

So after a few hours of re-teaching myself how to crochet I finally got a beanie done!! It's so cute and little! :) I'm so excited to make beanies like crazy for those little babies in Jordan! It just makes my heart happy.

Baby Hats

Baby Hats for Jordan

A small mission to make a big difference

The Plan: We (Jon & Anna Bay) are traveling to Jordan in February and want to take as many baby hats with us as we can fit in a suitcase. We will personally deliver them to a hospital and the babies in need.

What we need: We need baby hats!! Crocheted or knitted. Sized to fit newborns. Done by February 1, 2010 so we can pack them up for their special delivery.

Elder Erich W. Kopischke of the Seventy recounted in the September 2009 Ensign:

“Recently I attended a conference of Church humanitarian missionaries in Jordan. As I met with them, I saw two sisters knitting. They told me they were knitting little caps for newborns. In the northern part of the capital city of Amman is a hospital that delivers 50 babies a day. The people there are very poor. After delivery, mothers and babies are sent back to their homes, where there is no heating. Many of these babies suffer from disease and die because of a loss of body heat.”

“We made about 2,000 newborn kits this year, but only had about 500 hats to put in them, so the additional kits went without. We hope that the ones with hats in them, go to the right people.” -Sister Donna Colson, Jordan Humanitarian Missionary

If you are interested just start crocheting!! I have patterns if you need them!

And please let me know so that I can get an idea of the size suitcase I need!

Any questions please let me know!

Anna Bay

annban213@gmail.com

Home Sweet Home!

I know, it's about time right? We've had our house since the end of September and have been living here for 3 weeks-ish. I should let ya'll see it... well, now that it's more put together and more presentable here are a few pictures!

Kitchen

Area of dining!

The other side of the living room

Living room ispired by the Draper temple... just a little bit. ;)

Office

Frogs!!! They just make you happy!!

The kiddos' room! (Kolby/Jimmy/future bambinos)

well... since I'm still blogger-challenged, that's all folks! Until next time!

Eagle Mountainites!

Eagle Mountianites!!
To celebrate our move we decided to dress up as Eagle Mountainites for Halloween! Everyone gives us a hard time about living in the boonies, so we dressed for the occasion. (Disclaimer: We mean no offense to anyone living in Eagle Mountain, this is just a funny interpretation!)

October was crazy and I'm not going to lie; I'm glad it's November.
We repainted the house, refinished the floors, and got new carpet, while packing, moving, working, and finishing up the term with homework galore! Add church and family things and to say the least it was a busy month. In true Anna fashion I did to much, wore myself out and have been sick for the past 2 weeks! :) But Novemeber will prove to be less stressfull... or else! Right now we're not very busy, but we'll see how long that lasts.... HA.

Happy side note: Now that Halloween is over, Jon will let me bring out more Christmas decor! Woot!

3 Months of Bliss

Wow! We've been married 3 months! It seems like so much longer... in a really good way. It's amazing how you can live without someone for your whole life, then in just a few months time they become your everything and it seems like you have known them forever! I think that's what they call soul-mates, and that's definitely what we are!! We like celebrating our life together everyday, but especially on occasions such as this; so we went to Hale Center Theater and saw "Curtains" last night and it was awesome! We would recommend it for sure!
We are still ridiculously in love and extremely happy! Eternity is going to be so fun, bring it on!!

Adventure...

You gotta love the timing of life. Always an adventure. Everything has been perfect since we've been married, we are so blessed, so I guess it was our turn for a little change. Ha.
So Jon's car, the Polka Dotted Wonder, has seen better days. The paint alone is a sight to see, but the sun roof doesn't work, there's an oil leak, the windows in the back don't stay up, and the newest thing is that there was a leak in the radiator. No worries, last time Jon took the car in they said to just keep up on adding the oil and coolant and we'd be ok. Woot.

So Saturday was going to be a long day, but we were ready for it... or so we thought. We were helping out with Governor's Day up at Rice Eccles for Argosy (Jon's work). It would have been annoying for Jon to work another Saturday, but I got to go with him. (I even got an Argosy shirt to look official!) We had to be there at 7:00 AM. Woot. All the stuff was in Jon's car so we took it with out thinking about it. We have a fun time playing games with the kiddos, making snow cones, and handing out balloons. We left at noon to be down to Provo by 2:00. We couldn't get into our car because of the car next to us, so Jon took the opportunity to fill up the car with the needed oil and coolant. All filled up we were good to go...

We got to lunch and come out and there is a puddle of coolant in the parking lot coming out of Jon's car. Oops. But we had to hurry and figured we would be ok. We thought about trading cars, but again, no time. So we head to Provo. Note: this was a very hot day!

Almost to BYU where we're excited to see "World of Dance" we're on University Parkway, so close, then the light comes on... we're overheating... no big deal... we're almost there... then the smoke... just a little on one side... then a lot out of both sides! Luckily we were right by a gas station so we pull in. We park, Jon gets out to scope out the situation and this little old man looks at me and says "That can't be good" and he was right. Jon opens the hood and coolant is spuing out of the radiator!!! No joke, it was everywhere. There's a huge crack in the radiator and we're stuck. The cute old man comes over and he just happens to be a mechanic. He looks at the car and talks to Jon about options. The only option really is to find a ride home and get a new radiator on Monday. Awesome. Since we would have to wait for a ride anyway the man offers to drive us to BYU so we can see the rest of the dance show. He was sweet. So at least we got to see some dancing and some folk dance friends as we waited.


To understand the awesome timing... both of our Dads are out of town, Jimmy is going to Homecoming so Mom is helping him, and Cami is doing his date's hair, My mom has a quilt show and none of my brothers can help. So we have to wait a few hours before any help can come. And we're buying house, we close next week, so we can't do anything big with money untill all that is done. Woot.

Luckily Tom and Mom come down with the truck and a tow rope. Both Jon and Tom have seen Dad do this before but have never done it themselves. Mom and I just laugh as we're freaking out about it all. The boys figure it out. Jon's car is a Saturn and most of the front and frame is made out of plastic, ok, basically I think we're going to die! Ha. So we get ready to go and I decide to ride with Jon in the car... if anything happened I didn't want him to be alone! So we start off... being towed. It was SO Jerky! I get car sick so I'm thinking the whole time I'm either going to throw up, or we're going to rip off the bottom of the car! The first 3 minutes were horrible!! I knew this was going to be the longest drive home in my life!! But luckily Tom and Jon are amazing and they figure it out and it's smooth sailing. But as we're riding home the car starts making all sorts of noises... ha... everything is breaking. All we can do is laugh!!



















We make it home safe... laughing all the way. Mom and I are texting the whole time because she can see the look of panic on my face in the rear view mirror. Ha. We park the car at the Bay's and say goodbye for awhile.
We're still deciding what to do, whether we should fix the radiator or just buy a new car. Of course we would need to buy a new car when we're buying a new house! But with our new longer commute who knows how long the car would have lasted anyway!

You gotta love adventures in life!

SOLD!

I think it may have finally hit me... we're buying a house, for real. It's not that I didn't realize it before but you know when you have that moment when you realize something is really happening and it's more than just a nice thought... yep, that what happened when I saw the "SOLD" sign in front of our house! I was giddy! So giddy in fact I couldn't help but embrace my cute husband and force him to be in a picture with me! (My Mom says this picture should be in a commercial) It was so fun to look through the house and think of really living there! We have such a to-do list! We LOVE the house, but of course we want to make it our own. Paint a little there, build a little there. It'll be so fun! We'll definately have a house warming party... eventually. Then y'all can come and see how cute it is... if you are willing to make the drive. Lol.

My favorite part of the house is the fireplace (Even though it's not finished yet). I LOVE fireplaces, they are just so cozy! I'm so excited to be able to have our stockings hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon will be there! One day... hopefully soon we'll finish a nice family room to house the fireplace and it will be the cool place to hang out for sure! Woot. This house just has personality which I love! I can't wait to decorate it! Tai Pan and IKEA here I come!

(One day I'll figure out how to add the pictures and things better, but until that day... don't judge me and my lack of skills!)

Today was the world cup qualifier game between El Salvador and USA. The game was awesome and USA won 2 to 1. Woot!! We went with Anna's family including Brycson, who likes to come to the games. Lately he is into Peter Pan. He and and Anna are best friends so he has decided that he is Peter Pan, Anna is Wendy, and I am Jon the lost boy. Tonight at the game Papa Hales bought Brycson cotton candy. It was the first time he has had it, and he was thoroughly enjoying the experience. Brycson was sitting on "Wendy's" lap and decided to share his cotton candy with us. This picture is us with our blue tongues. Brycson thought they were so funny - we laughed and laughed.

Life is GOOD!

So we think it's kinda funny how everyone wanted us to get a blog, because that's what people do these days is blog about life, but it seems like now that we have a blog everyone else has stopped blogging.... oh well, you got us into this thing, so I guess we'll use it! Here we go.... another post!

We thought life was good and slow, we were just hummin along, enjoying life, and then the craziness started!!!
I (Anna) decided to go back to school!! With Jon working at Argosy, and me not getting a teaching job, the idea of a masters degree kept coming up, over and over again. So I enrolled at Argosy and start this week! I'll be getting my masters in Educational Leadership while Jon is getting his MBA. Yep, we're crazy!! But they put us on a fast track and we'll graduate in 10 months if all goes well. We're spoiled! AH!!
While still working 2 days a week at the glorious DMV I'll also start substitute teaching next week. Woot. If that wasn't enough I'm also in YW so I have that funness each week. And if that wasn't enough to fill my time I got a call from an old friend and now I'm choreographing Draper Historic Theater's production of "Annie Jr"! Double woot! I'm really excited about it, there's just a LOT happening all at once!!
On Jon's end of things, he works hard everyday (which I really appreciate), will be doing school, and is Cubmaster!!! So bring on the pack meeting! :)
Life is good!!

But just in case it wasn't good and busy enough... we're buying a house!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're under contract on a house in Eagle Mountain! We should close the first of October! So this month is full of inspections and bargaining! WOOT! It's almost like we're grown-ups... but not really. We just do grown-up things! :) We know we are spoiled like crazy... blessed more like it, and we love it!!!

Woot! Our Cute new house!

Not Enough Sleep

So - tonight Anna decided that I don't sleep enough (which is probably true, he goes to bed late and wakes up early for work, and is always tired=not enough sleep). So when she left for young womens tonight she tucked me into bed and told me to sleep while she was gone... and of course I was obedient :) This is a picture of us after I woke up from my long nap... 2 hours or so. (Doesn't he look rested?) Apparantly you get the best sleep before midnight so it was a good idea! Then we had popsicles and vegged. WE love being married :) (And taking random pictures just for fun).

On our 1 month anniversary we went to the Salt Lake temple for a fun live session. After we went wandering through temple square and ran into Sister Santana who Jon taught in Brazil on his mission!!! Woot. She recognized him immediately and was SO excited to see him. She kept saying "Thank You" for bringing her the gospel. It was So cute! And her companion kept saying how amazing she was and how she talks about Elder Bay all the time! It was so fun. Woot for seeing the fruits of your mission! She's been in Salt Lake for 4 months and her English is pretty good! Jon almost practiced his Portuguese too. (Cute little shy husband)

After the temple Jon surprised me and took me to dinner at The Five Alls, this crazy little medieval restaurant in Salt Lake. It was SO fun, and romantic! But pretty sure we had way too much food! 5 courses gets to you!
1- Breadsticks with clam dip, 2 meatballs, and a pineapple slushy thing
2- Salad
3- Soup and fruit
4- Main course of awesomeness! English chips and WAY too much meat
5- Icecream!
We got home and died. :) It was amazing! Thanks to Jeremy for the suggestion, we would definately recommend it!

Woot for being married and more in love than ever!

Woo Hoo!! We just got married and we are loving it :)