Thanksgiving Break

Yes, I know Thanksgiving was last month but here are the pictures I promised! We were in Florida with my family.

Me and 2 of my sisters Angelyn (left) and Holly (right).

The men watching football together- Bryan, Josh and my dad. My hubby is folding our laundry while at it, how sweet is he?!
If you look closesly, the snowflake ornaments are in the shape of a "J." Josh did that and thought he was pretty clever.

Holly and Bryan's puppies just love Josh!

My Gus dog... I miss him!

Skittles, the cutest niece/puppy!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

We decorated our house for Christmas right before we left for Thanksgiving break so that it would be ready when we got back. I was so excited to decorate! Last year on the day after Christmas Josh and I went shopping for decorations because that's when they're on sale for way cheap. Anyway, so they were mostly all new and it was fun to open them up and decorate our place. Here are a few pics of our place. I'll post more pictures soon of our Thanksgiving break in Florida.

Our little 3 ft tree. It's small but we love it. It's perfect for us!

I was really excited about my kitchen towels... I think they're so cute!

Josh decorated our baker's rack so well.

My mom has an amazingly big Christmas village, as I'm sure many of yours do too. She gave me this last year- it's the start of my own!

This is my favorite "section" of our decorated stuff. Josh did this too, he's so amazing!

My mom embroidered these and gave them to us last year.

Merry Christmas!!!

Jackson

It's midnight but I'm wide awake... so what else better could I do than blog?!

Here are some way cute videos of some fun times we have had with Jackson in the past month. He is so fun and cute and we caught a few moments on video. Enjoy!

This first one is of Josh and Jackson "dancing."



The next one is of Jackson "getting" Josh with his toy sword at our place and opening and closing windows (he thinks it's so fun). In case you can't tell, he's saying "hi yah!"




And the last one is more getting Josh with the sword... trust me it's cute!




We love our nephew!

I Love CVS!

This is what I bought at CVS today- 4 Glade glass scented oil candle holders, 4 Glade scented oil candle refill packs, and 3 Dawn dish soaps. The subtotal was about $25 but after coupons and ECBs... I paid 78 cents!!! for all of it! Plus I got $6 more in ECBs from the Glade purchases.

Here's how I did it:

I used 4- buy one glade candle holder get a refill free coupons found HERE
2- 0.25 off any Dawn product from the 11/1 PG (prcotor and gamble- it's a newspaper coupon insert)
1- $1 off Dawn hand renewal dish soap from the Home Made Simple coupon booklet
1 $5/$20- 5 off a 20 dollar purchase CVS coupon
and finally $7 in ECBs I earned from a previous trip

In case you're wondering, ECBs are extra care bucks. You earn them at CVS when you purchase certain products are amounts of products. You have to sign up for their reward program called extra care. It's like a grocery store program where you sign up, get their card, and scan it every time you go there to get savings. You give the cashier your card to scan FIRST and then the qualifying purchases will generate ECBs on your receipt. They are as good as cash that you can use to buy anything (almost, except a few things like stamps, alcohol, gift cards...) at CVS. The idea is to buy items that give you ECBs and then the next time you go to use your ECBs towards purchasing more things that will generate ECBs. That way you are essentially rolling your ECBs and spending very little OOP (out of pocket). The first time you do this, you will have to spend some OOP to get the ECBs, but if you keep using them to get more ECBs then you can do what I did and get a bunch of things for very little of your money OOP.

Carving Tigger-Pumpkin

So for family home evening this week we (finally) carved our pumpkin! We did this with our friends Jared and Jenni last year when we were in Utah. We thought about you guys while we were doing it and we miss you! This year, we invited our friends Barton and Emily Sloan from our ward and had blast carving together. I looked up some pumkin patterns online and found super cute Disney ones. Josh and I chose to do Tigger because our nephew Jackson LOVES Tigger. Jackson is actually being Tigger for Halloween- he's too cute! Barton and Emily loved the Disney idea and they did Goofy. They both turned out pretty good if you ask me!

Trust me, it looks better in person!

My First Success with Couponing!

So, I've heard a lot about how much you can save by using coupons and shopping sales but I never really knew how to do it right. People would also say often you could get stuff for FREE doing it that way. Josh and I kinda tried when we lived in Utah last year, but we never got the hang of it or saw that great of results. I was playing around on Facebook the other day and saw some pictures from one of my friends. The pictures had a bunch of food and then the caption said how much it cost... it wasn't much at all! A few days later she posted another picture with a super low total cost. Like I'd heard, many of her items were free after the coupons. I had to asked her how she did it! She explained a few things to me, suggested some websites, and then I did a TON of internet research. I read blogs, websites, and printed coupons. Below is my first success story! All that is pictured was originally $27.18 before coupons. I paid a grand total of $2.16- with many items free. I seriously still can hardly believe it.

It consisits of 2 bags of Chex mix, 1/2 gallon milk, 2 frozen meals-FREE, a box of rice, 4 travel size contact solutions-FREE, heartburn medicine-FREE, dryer sheets, face wipes(travel size)-FREE, fruit cups, and 2 travel size toothpastes-FREE.


I'm still very much a newbie at this, but I'm going to keep at it. If I can do it, anyone can!

It's Getting Colder Here

So the weather has changed alot in the last week or so. It went from super hot to rainy then to cold/chilly. I guess that means Fall is really here but it's a lot colder Fall than I excpected. I guess I'm still hoping for Florida type weather where you can wear shorts until Christmas... man I miss that. Speaking of Christmas, we just got our palne tickets to Florida for Christmas! I'm so excited!!! We were actually trying to get tickets for Thanksgiving but the dates we wanted were unavailable. So we changed plans and now we'll drive for Thanksgiving and fly for Christmas. It's all Florida this year because we went to California for both last year. I haven't been home for a Thanksgiving in 6 years, so I'm definitely ready! We are going to have a lot of Rhames family fun. :) We will miss all the Reynolds in California though! :(

New topic- our ward is the best! We love our ward here, it is so fun and the people are so nice. There are tons of couples our age and at least 3 others I can think of right now who have husbands that are also first year medical students like us. There are others who are first year dental students as well. There are others still who are just new in the ward this summer like us, so there are a lot of new friends, which is so fun. It's fun having so many friends your age and in similar situations. We girls like to do stuff together. Sometimes you just need your girlfriends! Last weekend a few of us drove up to Cinncinati together and had fun shopping at IKEA and the Gap outlet. It was the perfect thing to do because at least for me, Josh hates shopping and so I had fun and he didn't have to go. Plus he had to go to school anyway. It was actually a Monday that I had off work.

So this will be another post without pictures... but at least I'm posting! I'll try to be better and take some pictures soon.

An Update

I haven't posted a blog in over a month because I always feel like I have nothing to blog about, mostly because I don't have any pictures or events to write about. I know that's a little silly but I still think like that. I want to change that though! I always LOVE reading Julie and David's blog because Julie updates so often and it's fun knowing what's going on with them. Especially since they are so far from us. It's probably my favorite to read because they always update. Then I realized, Julie doesn't always put up pictures... and she doesn't always have big events to write about. So, in an effort to blog more often I'm going to try do it more like Julie and David! (hope that's ok with you guys)

So nothing major has been happening but life. I get up at 6:00 every morning and Josh at 6:40. We get ready and I leave for work at 7:10. I recently got a job as a 3rd grade paraeducator at Breckinridge Elementary. This is my 3rd week. Basically what I do is go between the four 3rd grade classrooms all day and help with reading and math. I usually work with a small groups of kids: the same leveled reading groups and math groups of kids who are struggling with the concepts and need extra help. I leave at 3 everyday and have the rest of the day to relax. I usually come home and rest/read until Josh gets home between 5 and 6.

Josh is in med school at UK and leaves the house at 7:20 (just after me) every morning (well Mon-Fri). He drives up with his brother Adam who is dental school there. Josh has 2 classes this semester- Anatomy and Histology. In his anatomy lab they dissect real bodies, I've seen one and it's weird! He has one class a day and is done by noon. He studies (hard) until about 5 when he comes home to me! On the days he has anatomy lab he comes home smelling yucky (formaldehyde).

In the evenings we eat together and relax. That usually consists of watcing 24 (we're on season 3 right now, we get it from the library for free!), watching a Netflix movie, and/or hanging with Adam and Jenn and playing with our nephew Jackson. Currently, Josh is sitting beside me playing Super Mario World on the Wii.

So that's our life right now! We are super happy and loving living in Lexington. :)

Josh is practically a doctor now!!!

Jennilyn, Jackson, and I went to Josh's white coat ceremony today. It was so neat for me to see my hubby in a white doctors coat. He just looks ready to go now! I'm so proud of Josh and how hard he's worked to get here. He is going to be such an amazing doctor. He starts classes on Monday and I keep hearing about how BUSY he is going to be. Josh can handle it though, he's so smart and I'm happy to support him. The video below is of Josh going up to put the white coat on and then shake hands with the dean. He's not the one already on stage when the video starts. You hear them call his name and then he walks out.

We're so happy

He looks so great and doctorish!

with our nephew Jackson- so cute!

This one was at our house right after his stethoscope came in the mail, now he looks even more like a doctor!

Family Pictures and White Water Rafting

This summer has been fun. We spent a week at a beach house with my family (see Jenna's album on facebook) and then last week Jenna and I went to the South Carolina/Georgia border to spend a week vacation with her family. We stayed in a cabin up in the mountains and saw the sights and went white water rafting. It was a ton of fun. It was the first full family vacation we have had. The area was beautiful and the cabin was a lot of fun. We spent a lot of days and nights playing games. Her family is very competitive and loves playing games. Other activities we did were hikes to see some waterfalls and we went tubing down the Chattahoochee River. Naturally I won quite a few games, as did Jenna. We were probably the most winning couple in the cabin. We were also the King and Queen of the Chattahoochee River (we had the best ride) and the King and Queen of Dukes Creek Falls (we finished the hike to the bottom first) and Jenna was the ultimate Queen of Rumikub because she won the tournament. We also did family pictures. These were the first for the Rhames family in six years. Her mom picked out nice colors that made us look like a beautiful sunset. Below is a selection of the pictures that were taken.

Back Row: Josh, Dad, Bryan
Front Row: Angelyn, Jenna, Kyla, Mom, Holly

The sissies

The original Rhames

In this picture there is also Jayna (in purple) who is Kyla's best friend and pretty much an honorable Rhames also.

Now we get to the fun stuff. These are the rafting pictures. There is a series of pictures that show us approaching the biggest rapid of the day (Bulls Sluice). It amazing that we didn't all topple out of the raft. After that there are pictures of us jumping into the bottom of the rapid. The whole experience was a ton of fun. At one point in the trip we even rescued (and at the same time maybe almost killed) a lady who fell out of her raft. Ultimately we rescued her, but in the process we drug her over some rapids and rocks. Half the family was in our raft and the other half were in another raft. We'll have to post the other rafts pictures in another post because Jenna's dad has some classic expressions as he goes over the rapid. While we went down the river we also had some splash wars. I am proud to announce that our raft won every splash battle on the river.

Moving In- Before and After!

Here is a little photo tour our new town house! I have a lot of before and after shots for your viewing pleasure. :) The before pics are from the day we moved in and the after ones I took today, almost 2 weeks later. (although we were done unpacking in one week, I just now got around to taking the pictures).

Here is the least dramatic change because we have no dressers still- our bedroom!

before

after
You can kind of see my clothes are the ones neatly folded and piled along the wall. Josh's are strewn around everywhere else and still coming out of the suitcase, haha.

we also are sill waiting for our other nightstand we ordered to come in

walk in closet! I don't have a before of this one.

Before- master bathroom

After

Before- room 1

After
All we really did was neatly stack the boxes. This is all my teacher stuff so we're not putting it in a closet since hopefully I'll have a job soon and need to take this all to school.

Before- room 2

After
computer and scrapbooking stuff in this corner...

... everything else organized in this closet (you can only see half of it, but the other half is neatly organized too)

Before- guest bathroom

After
We do still need to hang a towel rack which is why it's sitting on the counter.

Before-downstairs bathroom

After

Before- dinning room

Before- Kitchen

After
We're getting rid of the brown table (someone gave it to us for free but we didn't like it too much). The white one is one we got off craigslist that we really like. So when the other table is gone, the dining room will have a lot more space.

see the bakers rack in the corner? we got that at a yard sale for $10 and I love it!

After- kitchen

Before- living room

After

we still need to hang Jesus on the wall, it's so heavy we need a new bracket cause the old one fell off

And that's all the rooms in our house! We really like it and love all the space we have. Kentucky has been nice so far. The greatest though is living right next to Adam, Jen, and Jackson! They are the best neighbors.