MTC --> Oregon --> Idaho Falls

MTC:

Dropping of Allie was one of the hardest things I have EVER had to do.  I thought I was going to get out of there without crying.. FAT CHANCE OF THAT! Oh boy did the tears fall.  We drove down to the MTC on Wednesday July 22, 2015.  We ate at Carls Jr.  I thought that I wouldn’t be able to eat, but surprisingly, I ate my whole sandwich.  We all did. We went to the temple across the street and cried and cried and cried.  We got lots of family pictures though.  After family pictures, we all jumped into the truck and took her to the MTC.  Again, that was hard.  They aren’t kidding when they said they just drop them off and go.  YOU DO! You get out of the car, say one last goodbye and then she was gone! You can follow her adventures in Nicaragua at  hermanaalliejackson.blogspot.com

Left to right: Jason, Me, dad (Brandon), Allie, Lindsie, mom (Angie), & Kendal

Just us girls! 

We will be reunited in 18 months!!! 

OREGON:

Devin and I’s day didn’t end there.  We drove all the way home, only to drive BACK to Salt Lake to catch a plane to Oregon.  I haven’t been on a plane since we moved home from Mexico.  Might I add, I am TERRIFIED of heights.  Thanks to my awesome husband, I just closed my eyes and hung on tight haha.  Okay, so it wasn’t THAT bad.  But still got my anxiety up a little bit.  BUT I obviously lived to tell the story.  SO! We got to the airport in Portland and they thought it would be a good idea to do construction near the entrance to the baggage claim.  We had to take a minor detour… which was fine just annoying.  We got taken to our hotel and really didn’t do anything.  The next morning we went to Bob’s Red Mill.  They are SOO COOL!! & very healthy! They have everything you can imagine.  We went to the temple also and HOLY MOLY!! GORGEOUS!! I love any temple that I go to.  I love that I can feel close to God even without going inside.  After the temple we hit the locks.  It’s a dang cool place! When barges come down the river, it’s a place that will raise the water level and then when the boat is in the locks, it lowers it to meet the lower river.  Or visa-versa.  Super neat.  Also, I rode a boat.  It was a 2 hour boat ride and was pretty fun! Just a slow tour up and down the  Columbian River.  That was all we really did that day.  On the 24^th, we went and picked up Devins Aunt and Uncle.  Then we went on our way to the BEACH!! Woohoo!! Spend the day at the beach just chillin’! 25^th we went to Tillamook Cheese Plant.  I quite enjoy cheese.  Depending on what kind.  Haha Oh my gosh after we went to Tillamook, we went back to the beach house and the beach and went to the tide pools! And guess what we saw?! STAR FISH!! :D we saw 6 different star fish, and Dev even touched one.  I didn’t.  it looked scaly. Ewww… I love starfish so much that Dev’s brother, Derik, bought me a real one (dead, obviously) to take home.  I love it so much.  On that note, Devin also bought me the most GORGEOUS lighthouse ever.  I am in love with it.  You can put a candle in the top of it so that it actually lights up.  Speaking of lighthouse, we went over to North Head lighthouse in Washington, and I actually went to the top.  Again, frightening, but I have an awesome husband that helped.  We ended our trip by staying in the Seashore Inn.  We watched the sun set that night and it was so beautiful.  We woke up Monday morning and went sand dollar hunting and then flew home! It was a great trip and a good time to spend with family. 

IDAHO FALLS:

Devin got a job at Melaleuca.  With that, came moving! After getting back from Oregon (on Monday) we had a funeral to attend on Tuesday.  (Devin’s great-uncle, Keith) We had half a day on Tuesday, half a day on Wednesday and all day Thursday to pack before leaving on Friday.  Guess what.  We hadn’t even started.  Lucky us huh! I swear I NEVER want to see another cardboard box as long as a live.  Obviously I doubt that that will happen, but one could wish.  We packed up all of our stuff and Thursday night we went to say goodbye to my family.  That was hard too.  What a week huh! So much crying haha but, we’re an 2 ½ hours away, so it really isn’t that bad.  We left at about 8:30 on Friday morning with Dev’s family and made it up here at about 11:30.  The men hauled all the stuff in while LaDawn and I unpacked.  Boy do we have a lot of crap! Dev’s family left between 2:30 & 3:30.  Surprisingly Dev and I got the rest of our things unpacked pretty easily.  We’re enjoying it up here in Ammon.  It’s a pretty, small town feeling place.  A lot like Wellsville.  I guess it’s not so bad. :)  

Portland, Oregon temple.  07/23/15

Our van for the trip! Dev calls it the "shag wagon"

                           bought these for my siblings.  Hope, love, wisdom, courage, & patience

we were on a VERY high bridge.  I had it in me to take one picture then got nauseous on the bridge and had to leave...haha

Camp 18 were we stopped for lunch on 07/24/15

one of my favorite pictures of us!! top of a lighthouse, scared outta my mind! 

North Head light house, 07/26/15

Grandpa, LaDawn, Gerald, Claire, Me, Devin and Derik

3 of the 6 starfish that we saw! 

OUR APARTMENT!

starfish and lighthouse from Oregon

I LOVE OUR KITCHEN!!

We're moving!!

Guess what?! We are moving.  Idaho Falls, ID is where we are going to be calling home for hopefully the next couple of years.  Devin got a job at Melaleuca and he starts on August 3, 2015.  What a process that was!! Devin applied for the position back in June and it was seriously A MONTH LONG PROCESS!! So..it started out with a lady named Kym.  Devin met her at the career day up at USU back in like March.  Devin gave her his resume and she went nuts! She started circling all these things on his resume saying that he was a perfect match for a position that was coming up.  Then that was the end of  it! Well… the end of May, Devin applies for the MIT job.  Manager in Training.  This Kym lady calls him while he is at the farm and kind of does a phone interview.  Then he’s going to interview up there the next Tuesday.  He gets there and the facility is HUGE! It’s seriously like a castle.  Dev says that when he met this Kym lady, that she took him on a tour for like half an hour.  When they got back to the conference room, Dev asked her if she was going to interview him or just give him the tour.  She said that she had been interviewing him since he got there.  His confused face was showing, I’m sure, because the next thing that she says is “I’m an ex-FBI profiler”.. uhh what?! That’s not something you want to hear in a job interview.. he interviewed with a few people and then he had to go back up the next week and do it all over again!! He got to talk to the COS! (chief of staffing) According to Kym, if you didn’t pass the other interviews, you didn’t even talk to the COS.  It went really well with him.  NOW THE WAITING GAME STARTS! Ugh.. if any of you know me, I was DYING!! My anxiety was off the charts waiting to hear back from them.  Every day I kept calling Dev asking “have you heard anything yet??” and it seemed like an eternity before he called me to tell me that he had heard from them.  So on June 26, 2015, (seriously like 2 weeks after his last interview..) Devin texted me saying that he had got a call from Melaleuca.  He thought that it was me calling (because I’m always calling..) and he BARELY missed the phone call.  There was one problem.  They didn’t leave a voicemail.  He calls back and the lady who answered the phone said that without a message, she doesn’t know who called him.  He thought that it would have been Kym.  The receptionist transferred him to Kyms department and another lady answered.  Well.. guess what.  Kym doesn’t work there anymore! That’s why it took so long to hear back from her!! The lady called and said that she wanted to offer Devin the job.  As you can already guess, he accepted it. 

Apartment hunting:

As soon as we found out that Devin got the job, we decided that we would go up on the 2^nd of July and go apartment shopping.  WHAT A NIGHTMARE!! I enjoy shopping.  But that?.. that SUCKED! Never grow up.  We started at 8 AM and we finally got back to grandma and grandpas at 5PM.  We had these apartment viewings scheduled and they just didn’t feel right.  There was one that we absolutely LOVED in Shelley, but they wanted like $1500.00 by July 20^th.. I think we could do better than that… at one point, there was an apartment that we didn’t even want to waste our time on because the pics looked kind of old.  (the ones that we did see..) and at lunch Dev just had a feeling that we should go and look at it.  So we went.  When you got to the apartment complex, it seriously looked like a hotel.  In fact, I am like 99% sure that it was an old retirement center.  We looked at the apartment and it was very, very nice inside.  But when you walked out of the apartment, it felt like a hotel.  I did not like that.  It was a 1 bedroom apartment that was basically in a hotel room. We had another one in the back of our heads.  It was a two bedroom apartment and cheap.  I loved it.  Devin didn’t though.  By this time I was seriously in tears.  This was the only day we were going to be able to come up for a couple of weeks and we HAD to go home with an apartment.  So we said a prayer.  We prayed and then we waited.  Devin wanted to go back to the one bedroom apartment and take a look again.  I was fine doing that.  We went back and the lady was kind enough to let us look at the apartment, just the two of us.   I felt at peace when we went back.  I felt like I would be safe in this apartment.  We went back to talk to manager and she told us that it was fair game. (The thing with this apartment is that a guy was supposedly sending in a deposit for it.  But the manager was giving him til 4 PM and if she didn’t hear from him, then it was fair game.) Whoever could get her the deposit first, could get the apartment.  We wanted the apartment.  So we HURRIED to the nearest Zion’s Bank (like 2 minutes away) and got a cashiers check.  The poor lady trying to help us was having printing problems and it felt like it was taking FOREVER! We went back, signed the application papers and waited to get approved.  Of course we got approved, I mean, it’s not like we’re terrible people haha.  That was that. Now of course, I am IN LOVE with the thing that I cant wait to go and start setting up and decorating! Haha J  As of July 20^th, we will have our apartment and we will be on our way to Idaho Falls the last week of July!!

Work – Last day:

Ok, so I seriously loved my job.  I bill for doctors and I loved it.  I loved the girls that I worked with and knowing that I would have to leave them seriously just broke my heart.  After I put my two weeks in officially, there were days were I would just come home and cry.  My boss was amazing.  Mad at me for leaving, but amazing.  The girls that I worked with are so sweet and so incredible.  Well yesterday (July 17^th) was my last day.  I’ve been training my replacement all week and for some reason, the first half of yesterday went by very quickly.  Before I knew it, it was lunch and we were eating Jack’s Pizza.  Delicious, by the way.. After lunch the day seriously DRUG ON.. I knew that I would be leaving and it just made me sick.  I’ve never had a job that I have liked as much as this job.  I didn’t even know that it was possible to wake up in the morning and be excited and willing to go to work.  My doctors were so awesome to work with and their patients were so sweet.  Obviously you have your bad days where you talk to someone who is a having a bad day..but all the good days made up for those couple bad ones.  When it was time to leave, I went and I hugged my boss.  I held it together pretty well.  I kind of choked up but I didn’t cry.  Then I hugged the next girl and I just broke down.  Even today, I think about the fact that I’m not going to work on Monday and I cry.  It’s kind of embarrassing actually.  I hugged the rest of the girls and I left.  I cried the whole way home and I cried last night and I cried a little bit today.  (what can I say.. I am  A HUGE BABY) I know it will be ok.  I just feel like we were family there.  It’s never easy leaving family.  (if I was that bad at work, picture in your head how bad it will be when we leave our actual families…) I’m grateful for the friendships that I made at work and for the experiences that I learned.  I will forever love them and consider them not only coworkers but some of my best friends.  I’m excited for this opportunity that Dev has to start this new job and for us to start this new adventure together.  I know that it will be hard, but it will definitely be worth it. 

This is the front of the apartment complex

The center of the complex

Funny enough, these two windows are the windows to our apartments

This is our kitchen and part of the family room.  I dont know why I was such a ding-dong and only took one picture of the place... 

Nicaragua, Managua South.

OK…so I am WAYYY BEHIND!! This should have been posted in March, but life happened.  So here it is..9 days before she leaves..

My baby sister got her mission call.  I have quite the mixed feelings about her going on a mission.  We had friends and family over on March 8^th (2015) for a “opening party”.  Grandma and Grandpa Jackson, Grandma Karen, Jaden & Julie and their family, Kenny, Jason and their family, Meg, Miles, Bryson, Jared and Shelly and their kids all came.  A bunch of people that Allie knew also came to the grand opening.  At 3PM we ate Mexican Hay Stacks (just the family) and then we waited for people to roll in.  We had Krey and Brandy’s family as well Amy Rojas on a “skype” call.  Then the moment came.  Allie read her mission call and she says “NICARAGUA MANAGUA SOUTH” mission.  WHAT!? I instantly look at Devin, who’s behind me while I’m videotaping, and I see his eyes looking back and forth trying to figure out what the heck is happening.  Then he screams like everyone else.  Why is this so important that I look at him? Well, that was the exact mission that he went to.  How the heck did that happen?! Out of all of the missions in the world, plus all the Spanish-speaking missions (we knew she had to go Spanish..) HOW DID SHE GET CALLED TO HER BROTHERS MISSION?!  Now that we are 9 days away…I am seriously just numb. Devin is soo excited for her to go to the country that he loves just as much as America.  I of course, am still numb.  Allie and I fight and we don’t agree on everything, but she’s my baby sister.  I will always love her.  She’s been my best friend since I was 2.  That’s a long time to have a best friend.  I know that next Wednesday I will BAWL.  Its going to be bad.  I will bawl. And I will bawl. And I will bawl!!  Im not looking forward to it.  But I am looking forward to the adventures that she will have.  I keep saying hopefully I’ll have more time to post and this time I think I mean it.  And I’ll let you know why in my next post.  BUT for now: Felicidades Allie.  Estoy muy orgullosa de ti J Devin y yo te amamos y te esperamos lo mejor.  Yo se que tu vas a hacer cosas increibles. 

CHRISTMAS - FEBRUARY

Well.  I seriously suck at this whole writing thing.  I was doing so good too!! Christmas wasn’t so bad J I got a nice new camera.  I LOVE IT! It’s so nice.  Devin had also managed to surprise me with a Kitchen Aide! I absolutely love it.  I use it ALL the time!! Christmas Eve we went and spend the evening with Grandma Shirley and her family. (Devin’s dads side..) and Christmas Day we bounced around both of our families.  Devin got the new Xbox One for Christmas and I bought him Call of Duty and some stuff for grilling.  I tell you, he is quite the cook!! I love it when he tries new things on the grills. Also, I am getting quite pro at Halo.  At least on easy ;) haha.  We went up to my Grandma and Grandpa Jacksons house the day after Christmas since we didn’t go there on Thanksgiving.  It was really enjoyable.  Dad took us tubing behind the fourwheeler and the suburban. I haven’t done that in soo long! I was very sore the next day.. Nothing too exiting happened in January.  We celebrated Jedds and Grandpa Donalds birthdays.  Then February hit.  We had Grandma Karens, Megans, my moms and my birthday to celebrate.  For my birthday Devin got lower bowl tickets to the Jazz vs Bucks game that was actually being played on my birthday.  We decided it would be super fun to take my family.  Especially since my siblings have never been to one before! We ate at Chuck-A-Rama and enjoyed the game together.  The only part I didn’t like were the people sitting behind me.  I’m pretty sure they were already drunk when they showed up to the game.  I was just waiting for all four of us (Allie, Kendal, Devin and I – we sat in a different section than mom, dad, Jason and Lindsie) to have beer spilled on our heads. Devin and I had gone to the Jazz vs Lakers game 3 days before and someone had spilled beer in my shoe…But I mean seriously? It irritates me so bad when people drink and then talk about which one of them are going to drive home.  I know dang well every single one of them were drunk off their butts and then one of them was going to drive home.  Lucky us.  Or lucky me! You get to waive your beer above my head while you cheer for the team and then have it drip on my head.  It was a good thing that no beer got spilled on me or I would have been one ENOJADA birthday girl..

Devin spoiled me rotten.  Like usual.  He got us the tickets and he bought me season 6 & 8 of NCIS (Derik got me season7) and he got me a Caf-Pow mug!! Just like Abby’s.  I am seriously beyond excited.  Mom got me a new purse and a cute pink shirt! It’s been a good couple of months and I am excited for the rest of this year! J (pictures will hopefully come soon!!)