In case you missed my Valentine's post...

I have the BEST HUSBAND EVER.

Apart from his inherently wonderful qualities, he indulged me in my favorite ice cream from Baskin Robbins and window shopping at IKEA and Bed Bath and Beyond on Thursday, and he came up with an awesome date night yesterday! :)

I work at the San Diego Temple on Fridays, so I was gone most of the day, which allowed John to put together his little surprise. When I got home, I found that the dining table was missing. Well, more like hiding, as when I came through the front door, John was hastily closing the blinds of the sliding glass door leading out to our balcony.

He sent me to our room to change from my church clothes, and I wasn't allowed to come out till he was ready. When he finally let me come back out, I found this on our balcony:


So pretty!! He had dinner all ready and we enjoyed a romantic candle-lit dinner as the sun went down.




After dinner and clean up, we went downtown and took the ferry to Coronado Island, walked around for about an hour, then came back and had ice cream at home. It was lovely.

John took some really cool shots of the skyline

Here we are!!

We had a great time! Today we had lots of errands to do, John got a new laptop!! (His old one made scary grinding noises and was held together by velcro straps - it looked like it was going to take off into space at any given moment) We are very excited by the presence of new technology at the house. :) Thanks again to Mom and Dad Hunt for helping us out with that!! No more spaceship laptop! :)

The blogging boat

John has joined the blogging boat!! (as he puts it, anyway) The link to his blog is to the right of this post. Under John M :) It is a lovely blog. If you can call a guy's blog "lovely". Maybe I just say that because he just blogged about how great I am ;) hee hee

Now I've got to get my mom back on...she was on the boat...then fell off the boat. And hasn't posted on hers for over a year ;) It's a work in progress, no?

Church Highlights

So it's been a little bit since I last posted (okay, maybe not, but it's been a long week), but today's talks and lessons at church were so good today, I wanted to share some key points! :)

The idea that living the gospel is 'hard' is fundamentally false.

What's hard is:

-living without the Holy Spirit in your life
-not being able to hold a job because of drug addiction
-not having a healthy relationship with spouse and/or children because of a pornography addiction
-not having open loving relationships with family members
-not being trusted by others because you lie constantly
-living with the consequences of poor choices

What is easy is:

-having the Spirit in your home because you keep the commandments
-teaching your children the importance of church because you attend your church meetings
-cherishing your family members because your home is filled with love
-being free from addiction
-being trusted by others because you are trustworthy and honest

Kites are not held up by the wind, they are held up by the string. The commandments do not 'tie' us down, they free us and let us fly!

How Gentle God's Commands

In ancient times, there was once a wealthy man with a large family. To provide for his family, he had to go to the market to purchase supplies. Before he left to go to the market, he took a leather strap and tied 7 gold coins into it and tied it around his neck.

On his way to the market, he came upon a beggar. In his generous nature, the wealthy man gave the beggar 6 of the 7 gold coins tied around his neck, keeping only one for himself. The wealthy man re-tied the strap and went on his way.

The way to the market was a long one. Soon, the wealthy man tired and stopped by the shade of a large tree to rest. As the wealthy man slept, the same beggar who had received the gold coins came upon the wealthy man, drew a knife, and gently cut the last gold coin from the leather strap and stole away.

What do you think of that?

The wealthy man is the Lord. The 7 coins represent the days of the week. The Lord gives us 6 days to do as we please, to work, play, and learn. He keeps but one for Himself. When we do not keep the sabbath day holy, we are no better than the beggar, stealing away the last day for ourselves.

The Lord gives so much, and does not ask much of us:

*He gives us 6 days and asks for one in which we honor Him
*He gives us 90% of our increase and asks for 10% in tithes
*He gives us 353 days of the year to eat and drink, and only asks for 12 days given to fasting and prayer
*He gives us all kinds of delicious fruits, vegetables and foods, and asks that we stay away from a few things, like coffee, tea, alcohol and drugs.

How Gentle God's Commands.
They make us free.

We have a new COUGAR!

Congratulations to my brother Jason who just got accepted to attend BYU this summer! YAY!!!!!

Ha ha...he didn't really want a picture here...

But we are so excited for him! GO COUGS!

6 Months!!

Woo hoo!! We've made it to SIX MONTHS! And yes, we're still just grateful we're alive. I guess I never really updated that situation. John is all better now, but it still amazes us at how much we have been sick in the last 6 months. But, we've both agreed that regardless, these last 6 months have been the best of our lives :)

6 Months down...Eternity to go!!!!!!!

Happy Valentine's Day! aka "I have the best Husband EVER!"

Yay for love!! :)

We have had a lovely weekend leading up to Valentine's day! It was busy, but very fun! Friday we both worked at the Mid-Day temple shift, which lasted from 11am-5pm, but John had a group meeting for class before at 9. whew! ;) After that, we went to our ward adult dinner - "a Night in Tuscany" - where they served us spaghetti (confirming my prediction that they would) and then went to see the movie Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief! It opened on Friday and we were so excited! John and I both read the 5-book series called Percy Jackson and the Olympians and we loved them! So we greatly anticipated seeing the movie. The movie was based on the first book, and while we enjoyed watching it, the book was of course waaaaaaaay better. We had fun discussing what we did and didn't like afterward. Then when we got home, we crashed in bed, we were so sleepy!

Book: Highly Recommend :)

Movie: Also Recommend :)

Thanks to Mom and Dad Hunt for the dinner and a movie gift cards gift so we could go see Percy Jackson!!! :)

Saturday John went surfing (he's finally all better and it stopped raining!! hurray! he could go surfing!! he was so excited!!) and then we headed out to Newport Beach to do sealings with his parents, aunts and uncles, and grandma at the temple there. It was wonderful for me to remember the promises made at the sealing, considering we're celebrating our 6-month anniversary....TOMORROW! :) After sealings we went out to dinner with everyone to celebrate Grandpa Bosen's birthday! (we learned that he is as old as dirt) we went to Outback Steakhouse (my favorite :) yum!) Then we made the trip home and crashed in bed again! We just get so worn out... ha ha

Newport Beach Temple

The Sealings Bunch - Don't worry Mama Moffat, I'll email this to you :)

Thanks to Mom and Dad Moffat for the sweet card!! We felt so loved!!! :)

Then comes today! We had church of course, and it was lovely. :) After church and the traditional after church meal of WAFFLES :) John kicked me out of the apartment for about 45 minutes. ("what?!" you say? Don't worry, he wasn't mad at me) Once he allowed me to come home, ;) I was given an index card with a clue, which eventually lead me to 9 other index cards throughout the house with clues on them, too! So i got to go on a little valentine's day treasure hunt! by the end, I had collected a pedicure, a night where John cooks dinner, and a free ______ (I have to fill in the blank, I haven't decided yet). It was so fun! Each clue was accompanied with reasons he loves me and it was very sweet and thoughtful of him :)

My V-day festivities for John actually started Feb 3rd. John got TWELVE days of Valentine's! And if you'd like, you can set this to music in your head, the #1 item fits perfectly. :) But we're going to go backwards starting with what he got today ;)

On the 12th day of Valentine's my true love gave to meeeeee:

12 Ways to say it! (I love you in 12 different languages)
11 chocolate hearts
10 Reasons I love him
9 M&M's
8 Special Memories (a collage frame holding 8 pictures)
7 OREO cookies
6 love quotations
5 Sweeeeet Pet Naaaaaames (terms of endearment)

4 yummy candles (yummy smelling, that is)
3 special coupons
2 fun new card games
and a waterbottle BPA freeeeeeee

We also FINALLY finished decorating our bedroom, we've had pictures to hang since we moved here and we finally got them up! (it helped when I gave John the collage frame, we finally had something to complete the 'look')

Yay for a finished-and-not-blank wall! ;)

And so, as we celebrate our 6-month anniversary, we got to celebrate Valentine's day at the same time! Perfect timing, I think ;) And with the topic of love, we LOVE all of you!! Thank you all for your friendship and love (and for reading our blog hee hee)

Mormon Battalion Visitor Center

For date night this weekend (i have such good ideas, ha ha) we went to the Mormon Battalion visitor center in Old Town, San Diego. It recently reopened after undergoing extensive renovation and upgrade. I'd never been before it had been redone, but it's apparently VERY different from the way it was before. It was super high tech, so it makes sense. It was really cool! You take a tour and go through different rooms and watch films that tell the story of the battalion. At the very beginning you see some antique style portraits of some characters you'll see later. As the sister missionaries begin the tour, all of the sudden, the portraits come to life! (it's basically TV screens with frames around them, you get the idea) but it was fun to watch them, they start to talk to you and then suddenly get up and leave their frames. You follow them through the story of their march. John got outfitted for the march and we felt the tremor of a stampede that the battalion experienced. After the tour you can pan for gold, look out from the tower or watch movies. We had a lot of fun!

Westward ho!

Onward! NOW!

John is all ready for the march

Probably shouldn't trust me with the cannon...

we tried to find some gold...

didn't happen...

at the top of the tower

Honorary Members! We got to get our picture taken with a really old fashioned looking camera (but it had a computer screen on the back)

We had a great time and highly recommend it to anyone in this area. it's a great free date!! :)

Cake Blog Improvements

Well, at least I hope they are improvements. For one, the site address is changed and is now (thankfully) much shorter. The updated link has been applied to the bloglist to the right, but just so you all know, the new address is:

abcdyum.blogspot.com

But go check it out! Not only does it look different, I've got some new stuff on there! :)

Hmmm...

John: You know it's sad when we know exactly when the pharmacy is on lunch and break.

Ashley: yeah.

John had a doctor's appointment today. The doctor wasn't that helpful in telling John what exactly he had, but gave him some MORE antibiotics and medicine for his cough. We hope it helps!