Hill Billy Hoe Down, Belly Up, and Noses in Books

So after my last post on Friday September 17th, time has flied by. On Friday night when Jonathan finally got home from school at 8:30, we headed over to the Castle Downs stake center. It had been announced the Sunday prior that on friday, there would be a stake dance, and anyone who was anybody was going to be there. Everyone oohed and aaahhhed about how wonderful the something or other North Stake Band was and so Jonathan and I were excited the whole week to go to this super fun amazing dance that had been planned. Well little did we know what Edmontonians meant by party and dances here. We showed up about 9:00 to this "dance" and it was definitely a sight to behold. All the old people, and I mean OLD people were on the dance floor, getting their groove on. Jonathan looked at me and said, "everyone said how wonderful this band was... this music is for people who are sixty...nine and up!" It was true, the band was playing songs from like the 1920's or 1930's and it was old people doing the waltz and fox trot across the dance floor. Well Jonathan and I definitely didn't get to shake our hips that night. We tried to dance but we just ended up laughing as we tried to follow other couples as they spun and danced all over the dance floor in a haphazardly fashion. At one point, Jonathan and I were pretty worried for this lady because her husband was so into the music that as they spun around so fast, never in the same direction, that perhaps if the husband by accident let go this lady was going to go spinning or maybe even flying across the dance floor. So, after that fear and us giggling as fell over each others' feet trying to follow this other couple, we decided to call it a night and headed for home after only fifty minutes. We had to be true to our Calgarian hearts though, and we both agreed that the choices here for Young Single Adults is worse than Calgary, and we were both happy to have found each other before moving up to the cold north.

So Saturday night, Jonathan decided to be wonderful and clean out his babies' tank. Well I guess I need to explain what our babies are. On Cale's birthday, we decided to buy Cale two fish for his fresh-water aquarium and in doing so decided that we ourselves needed a family mascot and bought two fish. One was my beloved ChubChub fish and the other was a really really fat little fish that went belly up only after 12 hours of having him. So we put our fatso back in the bag belly up and returned to the store to get another one. While there we got our other babies Creamsicle, and Glub Glub, and Jonathan loves these fish so much! He probably feeds them three or four times a day and he has them trained so that when he walks by they swim to the front of the tank and make goldfish eyes at him. We have them on a bookshelf in our living room with our stereo underneath and we noticed that when we put music on, our beloved goldfish ChubChub would swim to the beat of the music and the other fish would join in. These fish are fighters they were able to survive the drive from Calgary to Edmonton in the back of mom's van in the cooler so we have gotten pretty attached to our golden babies... Okay so now that you have this vision, you can only guess what happens next.

We have now learned what the MAJOR difference is between Calgary and Edmonton. The water... it should have clued in for me that when I won't even drink the water from the tap that there is a problem. Well we changed the water, and in Calgary when you put the fish just in tap water they are fine, they can live, survive, swim around, and breath... but nope not here not even a slight chance! Jonathan had put the fish back in the water and they were all acting really funny, not swimming, but just breathing really hard... so hard that... our beloved goldfish ChubChub and Creamsicle, went belly up from all the chlorine in the water. Our sad sad tale.

So Jonathan, who is cute and tries to be a great husband didn't want to tell me that my favorite fish had died so he ran to PetSmart and bought three others to make me feel better before he told me. I miss my old goldfish because these ones don't dance but I am glad for what these new little fish represent. Right before moving to Edmonton, Jonathan and I spent a lot of time over at mom's house with Cale and Sarah. Well the joke became that Cale and Sarah were giants, and we were little because Cale and Sarah are bigger than both of us. So Jonathan, when he bought some new little fish bought some golden yellow little gold fish named Jonathan and Merrawyn, and a big fish that we named Sarah, and our old GlubGlub was renamed Cale. So now we have these two big gold fish and two little ones that remind us of home, especially for me, when I feel home sick.

School has really started off with a bang and projects are already coming due within the next week or so. Jonathan is such an example to me of a hard worker and someone who cherishes the belief that school is important. Every day Jonathan studies his chemistry for probably four hours or so a day, and is always doing his best to review the material. Me on the other hand... I am trying to juggle five courses and be a wife, so it's hard for me to devote as much time as he does to one course but I do the best I can. Jonathan has also already been a great help for me, as I have already struggled through my spanish class. The teacher has a funny idea that first you should try the work before it's taught and so many nights over the past two weeks I have been up until one or two in the morning working on this broken spanish that Jonathan sometimes gets frustrated with because of the grammatical errors the teacher has, and tries to explain to me why the sentence is wrong, and how to correct it. So by friday this week, I was spent done, I went to one class on friday and came home and slept. Slept all day Saturday, went to the Relief Society broadcast and I am finally on my way to recovery.

Before ending my post this week, I just wanted to encourage all the ladies who haven't yet watched the Relief Society broadcast to do so. What a wonderful Relief Society presidency that we have and I am so grateful also for a cute and loving prophet, President. Thomas S Monson, who spoke last night also. How wonderfully in tune and inspired are our leaders from the church and I felt that no matter where I was in the world or how many sisters there were that this Relief Society presidency loved me and had a concern for me. I was grateful to hear that one of the main blessings and purposes of Relief Society is to teach sisters, inadequate individuals like me, how to rise to the opportunities we are given to be able to truly learn how to love our husbands, our families, and our children. I just can't even express enough how the spirit poured down in that meeting as I listened to these wonderful sisters and our prophet talk. How interesting I thought, that even adult women, who should know better are being counselled by the prophet to stop judging appearances and learn to exercise charity, the pure love of Christ, and it is definitely my goal this week. So anyone even priesthood out there if you are needing some extra loving watch the Relief Society broadcast because it was amazing.

I forgot one last thing that was special this week. On Tuesday night, even with our busy schedule, Jonathan and I decided that we needed to go to the temple. So we got in our car and trekked to the other side of Edmonton to go through a session. I hadn't been feeling well since my lack of sleep since arriving in Edmonton that I was at the point where I was pushing myself to go. I got a feeling the closer we got to the temple, to tell Jonathan that if they are us to be the witness couple we'll say no but I shook off that thought as soon as it came and didn't think much of it. Until, as soon as we walked through the temple doors, Brother. Fairbanks came up to me and Jonathan and asked, "would you two like to be the witness couple?" It was a ironic coincidence that this should happen but we agreed to and in our session it was nice to join with Jonathan as we renewed our own covenants and did the work for others, of how sacred and special place the temple really is. No wonder Satan works so hard to push people down so that they cannot go within the temple walls because it is there you feel closer to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ than anywhere else. I was so grateful for the power and strength I received there and can't wait for our next opportunity to go again. Temples are such a beautiful blessing from the Lord and I am really grateful to have one in Edmonton where we live.

September Start Over

Drumroll please..........

FINALLY!!!!!

Finally, after months of trying to get a post started, I Merrawyn have finally done it and opened a blog for all our family and friends to read! But, I have to admit that I am not the brilliant one who came up with this master plan... it was Jonathan!

A little while after we got engaged, Jonathan and I were one night talking about all the many different experiences and emotions that we had had ever since becoming engaged and Jonathan passed along the idea that we should start a blog of all our adventures together. I agreed and after many well-intentioned attempts at starting a blog but never getting anywhere I am proud to announce that we now have our very own blog!! Now I have to admit that I have three years of blogging hidden away somewhere out there in the wonderful world of internet but this is mine and Jonathan's new and improved beautiful blog of our adventures together! And I am so super excited to write about them!!

I have to be truthful that the last four months of being married have slipped through my fingers quicker than sand and I wish I had started this blog earlier to record all our fun summer and crazy adventures together. But starting out in September and how we got to where we are today should give you each a little insight to how crazy and busy our lives have become!

September started out with a lot of boxes from three different houses. One house was Jonathan's parents, one house was my parent's, and the third house was the lovely little house, Jonathan and I had spent our first three newly-married months together; where we house sat a dog we nicknamed Prideful because of the way he walked and where we developed wonderful new and old friendships with amazing old family friends who exemplify love. To explain where all the boxes came from and where they were going, we might have to rewind the story a little bit. Right before Jonathan and I had gotten married I had just finished a dreadful year at the University of Calgary, and I was determined DETERMINED not to finish my schooling there so talking it over with Jonathan, both of us decided that we would move to Edmonton if I was accepted into the Bachelor of Education program at the University of Alberta.

Well we both have to be honest and say that both of us were getting a little antsy when the middle of August rolled around and we still didn't know if I had acceptance into the university. Jonathan right now is doing a university transfer program and so we weren't worried because we knew he would be accepted as soon as we registered but the wait for knowing if Edmonton was the place to come was excruciating. But after some fasting and prayer, together and individually, we both felt that we needed to move to Edmonton at the end of summer and prepare to both be enrolled in school.

We Searched High and Low:

Finally I think, right around the middle of August the acceptance e-mail finally came and the two of us in our little beat up car made the three hour drive to find housing in Edmonton. Well finding housing in Edmonton became it's own little adventure full of laughs and full of funny memories. My mom's sister lives in Edmonton so the two of us stayed with her while we looked for housing. Well we started the hunt one day after getting to Edmonton and got to the first apartment we were to look at and found that it was in a very very VERY sketchy area. There were two glass doors and to even get into where the intercom was, you had to have a key! The other funny part was that the apartment was down a street that was so skinny, only one car could fit through. We decided to take a closer look at the doors of the apartment but the closer we got the more sketchy the place became. Each apartment had its own little balcony and the balconies were rotting out of the wood and on one of the balconies were two ladies who were super drunk and it was only five or six o clock at night. So we nayed that idea of even going inside to look and went to check out another apartment that had a for rent sign that was down the same street but about a hundred times nicer. Well that place was all right but Jonathan was determined to find a place for only $600 and that one ranged around $700 and it had ugly yellow carpets and it was down that one car lane road!On a side note, it was pretty funny because whenever we would tell someone how much we were looking to spend, my family so my aunt, cousins (brother and sister), and then mom all had the same response about living in a cardboard box down by the river for that price.

I sometimes wish that Jonathan was writing this blog because he's got the more funny sense of humour and when you go apartment hunting, you definitely need that sense of comic relief. Well we went to one other place that I had found through the university student housing website. It was a lady from Calgary who had moved a couple years prior to Edmonton and was renting out her basement suite for a student. Well the price of rent in the advertisement had started at $600 including utlities but by the time we even looked at the place the price had sky rocketed to $750. Aunty Toni had taken us to these places and this third place we just all had to have a chuckle. The lady showed us the basement suite which was really only a rec room with a door that separated the bathroom and laundry from everything else. The lady looked at us and said she was an energy conserver so we would really have to talk about the price of utilities because in her words "really there is two of you and just one of me!" By the time we left the apartment's rent was at $850 so needless to say we didn't have an apartment that we loved by the end of the day.

Every little girl has once dreamed of being Barbie...

So Jonathan took things into his own hands and started to search through the classified ads we had of apartments available. It must be Jonathan's luck because the first place he called the next day is where we are living today. We called and asked about the one bedroom apartments they had for rent and found out they were about $849 for one. I nearly choked when I found out that this was the average price for one bedroom apartments here... So now you must be thinking well if Jonathan was only wanting to spend $600 and we turned down the apartment for $700 surely they wouldn't spend 250 dollars more a month to get into this apartment. Well as it turns out, in the apartment building the manager had an apartment that was unique than all other apartments. It was a bachelor suite of only 400 square feet that was a one bedroom apartment, with a full bath, and a kitchen and living room combined. The selling price of only $649 a month including heat and water. Well we jumped on coming to see the apartment and fell in love with it right away. Not only did we love the layout of the apartment the other selling point is that during our walk about, we saw... MISSIONARIES! Now that was exactly what sold us and so we live a minute away from the missionaries and seem them sometimes and while we have had our adventures with neighbors and smelling funny things when we walk through the hall to our little abode, we have a place to call our own! Jonathan jokes and calls it our little barbie house because everything is so small and the furniture all looks like what Barbie would have. I guess being a Strupcake Cupcake I definitely do love my little barbie house :)

*I will post pictures once I figure out how to ;)

Really, is Calgary still better than Edmonton?

We'll let you decide...

Since arriving in Edmonton, both Jonathan and I have noticed the differences between here and Calgary. For starters, it is true it is definitely colder here and I am already wearing my mittens in the morning on the way to class. It does eventually warm up during the day but we are definitely dreading how winter is going to be here. The other differences we have noticed here is that drivers in Edmonton are scary and the road systems are set up very funny! For starters you pass a school and you look high and you look low but there are NO and we mean NO signs that tell you to slow down because you are in a school zone, the only signs to be found are

"Slow Down When Lights Are Flashing max. 30". Now Jonathan and I are not even parents this and these lack of signs scare us! How can you not slow down when you see someone smaller than your kitchen chair walking down the sidewalk, alone, wearing a backpack bigger than they are. It's just weird. Also people are not friendly like in Calgary and let you in. Your signal light is not a suggestion that you want to move over lanes, here it's the five second warning that you better slow down or let me in, or you'll be eating my bumper. It has come to the point where I won't drive unless out of necessity and Jonathan does a lot of the driving. Thank goodness for boys and their assertive manners. The other differences we have noticed here are that people are still very friendly, once they are out of their cars, every person we have run to still have that good small town attitude where everyone is ready and willing to chat even if it means they are going to be late for whatever they are doing. I think we were in the bank the other day for around 45 minutes just because we were chatting with the girl. It's definitely nice to know that some people still are willing to be friendly! Last but not least, that small town feel we're talking about shows that same attitude when it comes to the LRT! It doesn't matter the LRT here comes every five to seven minutes no matter what time of day, you still expect to spend twenty to thirty minutes on the train getting somewhere because of the small town attitude. Last but not least, can someone please call Mc Hammer to get his clothes back?! People here dress really funny, it's normal when you are walking down the street, to see not high school kids but university students with purple, green, blue, pink, fluorescent yellow hair; you name the color we've probably seen it. Every where you turn, whether it be right or left, people here are dressed in either 80's rocker outfits, or Mc Hammer wannabes. I just hope it doesn't rub off on us!

Our Little Apartment :)