Where did 2011 go?

Wow....here it is November 2 and I believe that this is my second post for this year?

Long story short: work,school, homework and sleep are the 24 hours in my life. {I do wish though that the hubs and I had more compatible schedules}.

Oh, and I largely blame the Best Western behind my house for the lack of my blogging...BWdoesn't do free WiFi anymore...and I'm cheap.

Sorry.

Auburn

Crunch, Literally.

I know. It has been a long time. But with the new job, I haven't had the necessary time (or desire) to spend more of my life on the computer. This is my thought place, and there are feelings and emotions that I now wish to express. 

Jamison, Cierra, Paige and I decided to go up North and spend time with the family over the three day weekend for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Little did we know the events that would pursue on our drive up North on the 15th. 

My 2008 Hyundai Elantra is totaled.

We were passing Spanish Fork heading northbound when we started entering into the I-15 CORE project. The lanes had been narrowed down to two lanes with barriers on both sides to direct traffic through all of the changing of the lanes. We were in the left lane, and there was a car just a little further ahead and in the right lane. The car in front of us didn't realize the shift in traffic and was merging right into my car. I yelled "Jamison!" not knowing if he was seeing this car merging into us and we swerved to avoid hitting the car. Because we were going 65 mph, we had over corrected and started fish tailing. The first hit was in the front on the driver's side on the median. 

Still fish tailing, the front collision caused us to hit the back left (driver's side) on the left barrier popping the back tire.

That collision lifted the back wheels of the car off the ground as we are skidding perpendicular to the road on the front two wheels. I remember thinking to myself, 'we are going to flip' and started bracing myself in case of the car rolling. Jamison had been actively trying to gain control of our car through out the entire collision, and through his efforts and God's will our car never rolled. This next part none of us our quite sure how we got to the point that we did. But we collided into the right barrier after skidding down the road bouncing our car back into the left lane slamming perpendicular to the left barrier. That final crash that brought us to a halt definitely threw our heads back into the seats. Which gave us the whip lash we had all felt that evening. 

Sheer terror came over me not knowing what next to do. After confirming that we were all okay, shock was finally settling into my system. My car was dead and here traffic was trying to pass by us on the narrow freeway. When we had finally stopped all of the traffic at that time was 20 feet away from us at that point. I just remember several people running toward us in the car and making sure that we were all okay.

We were the only car in the accident, the car that had merged in to us didn't get hit and never stopped. 

How did they not know what havoc they had wreaked upon me and my family?

At first, this thought brought me to tears knowing that my car is gone. I had taken so much pride in my car, I took such good care of it. But although my car is gone, I have been truly blessed in many ways from this experience.

Am I blessed? Yes, I truly am.

I feel that we (all four of us) were being prepared for that moment. I find it interesting that when in reflection that you can see the Hand of God in every day to day functions. 

A couple of weeks ago, Jamison and I finally were on our own car insurance plan with Bear River Mutual. We literally were insured for two weeks before we had the accident. How grateful I was that our insurance had been finalized when they did.

A couple of days before the accident I had received a letter from my bank, which was odd to me because I went through paperless billing. I was on my way to throwing it away when I felt the need to open and just look at why I was receiving a statement. The letter was informing me that I had Gap Insurance on my Elantra. How important that information had been to me when sitting inside the destruction of my car knowing that I had Gap Insurance.

The day of the crash, Jamison couldn't find his wallet before we left. Having been paid the day before, we were just going to use the money in my bank account and that it wasn't necessary for him to have his cards with him. I had an overwhelming feeling that we needed to find Jamison's wallet before we left. We were late getting to Cierra and Paige's house to pick them up for the drive up and we almost left without his wallet with me making the drive up North. Before we had given up, Jamison had found his wallet. It had fallen off of the bed side table and landed in the middle of all of his school folders. 

There was a good chance that Jamison still would have driven even without his wallet only because we had always been careful on the road. How blessed we are that we found his wallet, that day was the day to have his wallet with him. Besides, the damage could have been worse if I had been the one driving the car. 

The trunk of my car was full of items and bags that we were taking up North with us. I had taken my laptop along with homework that I had placed all in my backpack. When I was about to put my backpack in the left back corner of my car I had decided against it at the last minute. I placed it between my legs instead, half way through the drive I was regretting putting my backpack between my legs. I had zero room, and with Cierra sitting behind me I had scooted my chair closer to the dashboard to accommodate her long legs. How blessed I am that I had felt the need to have it between my legs although it had been uncomfortable. The inside of my trunk where it is push in is where my laptop would have been. Both Jamison and Cierra had been planning on bringing their own laptops as well. Cierra had mentioned that every time she had reached to pack her laptop that something would come up and that she never got the chance to pack it. Cierra's bag was smashed in the trunk. Jamison had the feeling to not bring it at all. How blessed we were, although as silly as a laptop is, that sure would have been a trial if something had gone wrong. 

There was no broken glass, blood, or any airbags that had gone off. Everyone was worried that our airbags had not gone off but how blessed we were that they had not gone off! Having personally been too close to the dashboard I was in no position to protect myself and would have had serious injury from them. And I truly believe that by the airbags not going off that Jamison had made it possible for us to not have rolled. How scary it is to think what would have been different if the airbags had gone off. 

The fact that we were the only car in the accident was a blessing in itself. Who knows how worse off the accident would have been at that point. 

I am grateful for Cierra's intuition, when getting a ride with the Highway Patrolman who had been assisting us. Cierra blatantly asked the Patrolman if he knew our cousin Mike Hainey, who was a Highway Patrolman for Utah County. The patrolman proceeded in calling Mike over the radio, who happened to be working that day, telling him that he had three of his cousins in the backseat of his car. Within a matter of minutes, Mike was calling the patrolman on his cellphone and they proceeded with the conversation there. When we had arrived to where Dad was to pick us up at the KFC in Spanish Fork Mike was waiting for us there. When the patrolman gave us our claim number for the accident, Mike had told us that 99.9% of all accidents that were caused by losing control received tickets. He had run our claim number through the system and there was no ticket posted for us from the accident. How blessed we are by not having the ticket, I am sure that by Cierra's prompting to ask the patrolman if he had known our cousin saved us from having that ticket. 

Since the accident we have received an estimate from Martin's Collision Repair Center. Estimated amount of damage was $16,192.60. Martin's is deeming the car as of being totaled. How blessed we are that we don't have to make a claim on our insurance and not having to pay the $500 deductible. That is a blessing.

Although I have suffered through trauma from the accident, how grateful I was that none of us had been seriously injured. We are truly blessed and still have a lot to fulfill in this life and I believe that is why we were spared. We should have been more hurt then we were, we walked out with minor whip lash. 

How grateful I am for a Heavenly Father who truly watches out for our well-being and prepares us, if we listen to his promptings, for events such as what had happened. I cannot deny the power of the Spirit and it's calming presence when trying to recover from the accident. I know that He directly is a part of us each and every day and that if we listen, we can know and feel of his presence and be truly blessed. 

Oh the Weather....

has changed!

The warm weather lasted until the end of October for us this year, it wasn't until this last week that I started wearing warmer clothing. I love fall, and sadly enough it only lasted for a week until the snow came.

I was coming home from work last night (midnight) and had to brush two inches of snow from off my car. We woke up this morning to having to brush another two more inches from off of it. We got four inches of snow last night! Although I am sad that fall is now past, bring on the snow, the hot chocolate, blankets and Christmas lights!

Best Month of My Life!

Today being November 8 means that Jamison and I have been married for one month as of today! I cannot believe that we have been married for so long for what it seems to be such a short amount of time! Time sure flies by quickly when in love! Our wedding day was beautiful, {much wedding details and pictures to come when they get here!}and nothing could have made it better for us.

This was us exiting out of the Mount Timpanogos temple after we had been sealed for time and for all eternity. We were so happy and in love! 

It has amazed me how much my love for Jamison has grown every day. He is my best friend and is truly the only man that I have ever fallen in love with. We are perfect for each other. 

I love you Jamison!

Evidence Of a Weekend Well Used!

Since I am now working at Convergys, (I start my third week of work today), I am required to work Monday-Friday from 3:30-midnight. Since I cannot be with Jamison as much as I would like to, I am then to make sure that I make my weekends worth it! 

To start off our weekend, Jamison and I decided to do some organizing and get our life put together inside our house. It started off by us cleaning out our second bedroom, it was so cluttered that we could barely walk inside of the room. Now there are only 5 items on our floor, everything else we were able to organize in the closet! It was so nice to have that room now cleaned out!

After all of the cleaning, Jamison and I headed to the store to pick up ingredients for the salad for that evening's party we were going to, pick up some last minute articles of clothing for Jamison's costume, and to make a decision on night stands and table lamps! I have taken forever in deciding what I wanted, and I finally broke down and made my decision! {Jamison gave me permission to decorate the apartment how I want it!} Now if only buying curtains and wall art could be that easy! I have yet to find the curtains and wall art that I want!

After a couple hours of tools and random wood parts, Jamison and I built both of the night stands and put together our lamp set. I absolutely love what it did for our room!

Now for some curtains and some wall art! At the rate I am going, it could potentially take another month for that decision!

Then for the evening, Jamison and I were invited to a "How to Host a Murder" party by one of my work friends, Aimee. There were four couples in total, and one person from each couple was part of my training class that I am in at Convergys. The party was so much fun, and it required us to dress up as our character. The game is similar to the board game Clue, but that instead for this game, we act out as a character and try to solve the murder mystery while eating dinner. {No one ate my salad except Jamison and I, it was delicious! I tried to not be offended by it, oh well.} My character's name was Scoop, a journalist, and Jamison's character's name was Billy, a baseball player. The story was based off in the 1920's and the person murdered was Hal Cappone. We had to figure out which one of us had murdered him, it was so tricky! I thought I had for sure murdered Hal Cappone, but it turned out at the very end that I was in fact, not the killer. However, Billy (Jamison's character) did make an attempt to kill him by throwing a bomb in his car but Cappone had escaped. I had never played this before, so it was really neat to try something I had never done before and make new friends while I was at it!

This is Jamison and I in our costumes about to head over to our party! I think Jamison looks so good in hats, don't you think?! 

After such a great weekend, and the new time change, Jamison and I were exhausted! Now I have another week's worth of brainstorming for good ideas for us this next weekend!

Cookies!

My parents had given Jamison and I (really to me) a Kitchen Aid mixer for our wedding gift! I was so excited that I got one that I decided to try it out and make cookies in it for the first time!

This is my Kitchen Aid, I am not one of those weirdos who call their appliances real names such as 'Frank'. So...this is my Kitchen Aid mixer. It only looks dirty because I had finished mixing my yummy cookies that I was making!

I had decided to make my favorite homemade cookies, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Pudding cookies! The cookie dough, to me, is the best part. By the time the warm cookies are out of the oven I have no interest in eating them because I had eaten already so much cookie dough! This cookie dough is the best!

And because I have an artistic husband who is in a photography class, I have the added pressure {inflicted by myself} of taking impressive pictures with different angles. Plus, Jamison’s camera is really fun to take pictures with because of all of the cool things you can do on it. So this is me with artistic pictures.

And this here is the final product! Perfectly baked cookies! I was so proud that I didn’t burn one batch of cookies and it made 4 dozen! My secret is to take out my cookies 1 minute earlier then what the recipe calls for, only because the cookies still cook on the pan after it is taken out of the oven. Because I had so many leftover cookies, I delivered some to Lindsay and Rob (my sibling in-laws) and my next door neighbors Kasey and Megan. Trust me, Jamison and I didn't need 4 dozen cookies! I would say that I gave some to Jamison, but he inhaled them so quickly that without these pictures that I had taken there would have been no evidence that I had made cookies at all!


My first experience with my Kitchen Aid? Success!

Pumpkin Carving Madness

Jamison gets a little carried away when it is time to carve pumpkins, he gets out his ceramic tools so he can start carving away at his pumpkin. It honestly makes me laugh, he has to get the perfect pumpkin (which ends up costing us the most, his pumpkin was $6!) and although his sculpting is amazing it takes him several hours to complete his 'vision'. 

Jamison had the opportunity to carve two pumpkins this year, one pumpkin was at our ward party {which Jamison had to go by himself because I had to work} and the other pumpkin was at our apartment that we started carving at midnight {that is when I get off work}. 

This is the pumpkin that he had carved from our ward party, it was so impressive that Jamison even won us an award! 

I like taking some credit for this pumpkin because it says, "The Garners", which totally means the both of us! I did go over during one of my breaks at work where I enjoyed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that Jamison had made me for dinner, so I participated...just a little bit! It makes me laugh the award was originally for "A for effort" pumpkin....I thought it would be an appropriate award for what I had carved at midnight later on during the week! I didn't even bother taking a picture of it, it was that awful, definitely a "for effort" pumpkin!

And yes, this picture was taken at midnight! We were so tired! I had finished my pumpkin within an hour and fell asleep on the couch while waiting for Jamison to finish carving his pumpkin. He didn't finish his pumpkin until 2:30 in the morning! {We carved our pumpkins at night because our schedules conflict with each other, when he is at school I am at home, and when I go to work at 3:30 he then is able to come home.} If we wanted to carve pumpkins together it was going to have to be late at night! 

His pumpkin without being lit up....

What is so neat is that Jamison just starts hacking at it and designs what he is going to do while he is doing it. This is not based off of any pictures that he is looking at or a stencil. He crafted and created this as he went!

Jamison is so good at this, although it can tend be to time consuming and kind of costly... He makes it worth it!