HAIR

I am devoting this post to hair:
This past weekend we started going through some pictures of our childhood. (We are making a slide show of our lives for the wedding reception) Anyways, in both cases our hair has, well caused some problems.
When I was little, my hair stood straight out, kind of like there was static electricity in it at all times. Well my mom claims that she tried everything to get it to stay down and nothing worked so she just gave up. Now most of my pictures of my younger years look like this:

And this...

And this... (yes I was a good child)

And as I grew my hair eventually did lay down and look nice, although I have always had very thin and very, very straight hair (thanks to my dad).
Well now, the tables have turned. Payton is beginning to have a hair problem...
He came into the world bald...

Grew a nice head of hair...

And now it is beginning to thin...

I guess we have all had our difficulty with our hair at some point in our lives, and maybe we are going through that right now. Either way, our hair doesn't make us who we are.
And for that I just wanted to say that I will love you Payton no matter how much hair you have.

Town Hall for Hope

This semester Alexa and I have been taking Financial Peace University through a church here in Ames. This class is a video series that was done by Dave Ramsey. Some of you may have heard of him, but most of you probably haven't. Dave has a nationally syndicated radio show titled "The Dave Ramsey Show" where he takes calls on people struggling with money and helps teach them how to get back on their feet and make smart decisions with their money.

Dave's Financial Peace course has had a large impact on Alexa and I in our spending habits and our savings habits. In our class of 15 people alone we have over $500,000 of debt not including house mortgages and it has really opened us up to understanding how to use credit wisely and to even live without using credit. It's a pretty powerful thing to see. With trying to live comfortably here at school and save up for our house we have learned a lot of tips and tricks from Dave and are really excited to try out all we have learned after I start my job and we can live off our budget plan.

One really cool thing I found the other day is that Dave is hosting an online Town Hall meeting, similar to the one Barack Obama did the other day where Dave will take questions from people about the current economy and how NOT to participate in the recession that is going on right now. Check out the video below.

Pretty powerful stuff! Check out Dave's site here if you are more interested in what he does and what kinds of tips you can get from him. I would highly suggest to ANYONE that they take this course or at least pick up one of his books.

Spring Break??

Whew! What a week it was. My final spring break of my college career is now over and I'm able to look back and see all the things Alexa and I got done. It all started off with Alexa's first bridal shower. We received a lot of great things that will definitely help us to get started after our wedding.

Speaking of the wedding... We got a lot of our stuff done for that over break too. We had a few issues with our invitations since we were making them ourselves, but once we figured out our problem was the stamp pad not having enough ink we got back on track and finished them up after buying a new pad. They are now all sealed up and waiting for the addresses and stamps.


We also finalized a lot of what is going to happen at the reception; the food, the music, the table decorations, etc. One of the really exciting things was our trip to Hazleton to the amish community to talk with them about doing some baking for us, namely some buns to serve meat on and some angel food cakes. We were going to do strawberry shortcakes, but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to have them make angel food cakes for us. You definately should look forward to this!!

We did go through our house again. It is getting easier and easier to see ourselves in it the more we go through it and the more stuff that is being taken down off the walls. It is much easier to visualize what we can do to it once we get in there. But with that now comes the responsibilities of finding insurance and getting the utilities switched over to our name, so we are also realizing that it's not just all fun and games, which it has been up to this point.

We were able to take advantage of the warm weather and do some things outside. We are definitely looking forward to the summer and being done with school so we can enjoy the nights outside without having to worry about homework and what we have to get done by the next day. We are now down to 54 days until our wedding, and 5 weeks from Thursday we close on our house so things are starting to move along and we are getting really excited to get it all finished!

Wedding Pictures..

No not our wedding... These are pictures taken at Zach and Amanda Svoboda's wedding just a few weekends ago...

(Payton being silly)

(That's my man)

(The Love of my Life)

And Ahhh the cute couple we went with.. Andy and Sammie

is it here yet?

Preparing for this week has reminded me a lot of my rant from finals week last semester (here). It has also reminded me of my days in the back seat of the car screaming out the hated question "Are we there yet?". This week seems to just have everything piling on top of each other and I'm hardly finding the motivation to get it done (hence the blog post about it). I've known about this midterm test that I have on Wednesday and Friday for the whole semester, but it is amazing how things like that creep up on you without warning. I keep trying to get everything else done so I can focus on the exam, but it seems like my pile of "other things" just keeps getting larger and larger. So it's time to put that all aside and focus on the exam.

On the other hand did I say I was ready for a break? Alexa and I have a lot to get done over our break. Well, to put it this way, we basically have an ENTIRE wedding to plan. We have invitations to make and address, plates and silverware to buy, people to call, menu's and reception plans to make.... the list goes on. Throw in there a bridal shower, going through our house one more time and working out the details on that. Oh and throw in there the fact that we will be trying to find some time to relax I have a feeling our break is going to go by pretty fast. So in all the flurry of trying to get everything done I'm not sure if we will have time for a blog post, but rest assured we will update you all on our happenings when we return to the land of 24hr internet service.

Spring has Sprung..

Finally, the warm weather has arrived. I hope you all enjoyed this beautiful day (well if it was beautiful where you live). Payton and I decided that we could use some time outside so we put our homework aside, and yes I was trying to study, and went on a walk to the park that is pretty close to our apartment. It was good to get some sunlight on our pale skin, plus we could use the boost of vitamin D (sorry, its part of my major).
Anyways here's a few pictures of our walk...

And here is Payton supporting the shorts...

And finally, Payton being a kid was caught doing this... You'll never guess his real age...

Anyways, I hope you all found time to get out in the sun today!! Hopefully it lasts!

The weekend that was...

Sorry for the delay in posting. We have been extremely busy and haven't had time to sit down and blog. But now that I have a minute, I thought I would share with you our crazy, but fun weekend.
So Friday night Payton and I along with about 400 other college students attended the SALT company's winter retreat in Des Moines. The speaker was very energetic and had convicting messages that cut straight to the heart. His name is Dave Johnson, he is the Pastor at The Church of the Open Door in Minneapolis. And no, the doors aren't literally always open.
Anyways, we did that Friday night, came back to Ames and drove back to Des Moines Saturday morning for another session.
Saturday night we had to be back to Ames to attended a wedding for Zach Svoboda (a Vinton native) and Amanda. It was held at a winery in Ames called Praire Moon. It was a beautiful wedding, probably one of the prettiest weddings I have ever been too. We had a lot of fun that night with some friends we went with, Andy and Sammie. Lets just say we tore up the dance floor a little bit. I know, I know hard to believe that Payton is such a dancing machine, but he can be and I do have a video to prove it (I just can't post it yet, he's a little embarrased that we got it on video).
So after all of that dancing, and two very late nights, we were quite tired when Sunday rolled around so we both took very long naps. Whoops, oo well we still managed to get our necessary studying done. Well that was the weekend that was...
I will be posting pictures soon of the wedding (aka. Payton's dance moves), so stay tuned for that.
And lastly I just wanted to congratulate Zach and Amanda again on their wedding. May your marriage be full of many blessings!