Thanksgiving and now it's time for Christmas!!

I love Christmas! It's been so fun to get our own tree and decorate our little apartment. We started out with approximately...one Christmas decoration (a beautiful nativity scene I brought back from Ecuador) and now we have a whole decorated tree, stockings, and just enough other fun decorations to make our little apartment look like it's Christmas time.

Anyways, so back to Thanksgiving! We had a lot of fun since I had Thursday and Friday off work we had a great dinner and a fun trip to DC for the weekend. Greg's mom pretty much made everything and it was delicious but everyone really liked the sweet potatoes I brought and I was happy to be able to contribute my mom's famous Thanksgiving dish.

Greg and I with our neice Kylie, who just turned two

Preparing for Black Friday deals while we wait for dinner!

Then we headed off to Washington DC and after a short 6 1/2 hour drive (maybe 7 hrs with the snow and ice) and finding an awesome 4-star hotel for $45/night on Priceline (our new favorite website- thanks Dustin & Cami) we were ready to see as many sites as we could in two days.

We loved the Arlington Cemetery- it is an amazing place and it definitely made me more grateful for the thousands of people buried there. Also, the changing of the gaurd at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was so interesting- it is so neat that so much is shown that these unknown soldiers are gaurded so carefully every day and night.

We spent all day Saturday at the Mall and exploring all of the Smithsonian museums and the monuments. It was a long but exciting day to see so many things that are so important in our nation's history. It definitely made me think a lot more about all that has occured in this country to make it the way it is today.

Greg's favorite president. They have the same birthday...pretty cool.


Cool picture huh? Greg's really good at setting up the camera with the timer

Us in front of the Capitol- it was windy but a pretty nice day!

Changes around here...

Look at my beautiful green wall!!


I have the best husband ever. We've been talking about painting a wall in our living room so that it was a little more um fun and not ugly white walls everywhere. We're slowly trying to make it a nice homey place to live considering we may be here for a while. Anyways, so I came home from work the other day and he totally surprised me with it all done! I was telling him it would take my family two months to talk about it, a month to pick out the color and actually go buy it, and another week just to get it painted (right mom?). It definitely helps to have a husband who paints for his profession and can finish it in thirty minutes. But it looks so good and I love the color and it was just a great surprise! Now we just need to work on getting our pictures up on the wall...

Oh and the other wonderful change is I finally got my haircut! It's been a long time since I've had it as short as I like it (cuz I needed a little bit of length for the wedding). And since I moved out here I haven't known where to go or who to trust with my hair so it'd just grown out to this annoying long ugliness where I had to pull it back everyday for oh, two months basically.


So I finally went to Kenneth's, a hair salon out here that seems to be pretty popular and reliable, and they did a great job so I'm happy again :)

Fall time...

Wow I've been slacking on my blog for the past couple weeks but I'll try and catch up on our eventful life! Fall has been absolutely beautiful out here and because there aren't mountains (or hills for that matter) you just see SO many trees and all their changing colors. Then the wind blew for a couple days and all the leaves fell but we did enjoy the scenery for a while.

I wish I was better at photography but sorry, I don't have any good pictures but I did take a few of the beautiful sunsets we get to enjoy almost everyday when the whole sky turns pink...

So I was so excited for Halloween and I'm trying to show Greg how much fun it is when you really get into the holidays and celebrate so we planned a fun little dinner/pumpkin-carving night with some of our friends. My first time making soup pretty much from scratch (okay not totally but I had to cut up all the vegetables and add everything...whatever) but it turned out really good! Then we also carved our cute pumpkin from scratch, ya know, without one of those fancy carving kits with the picture and all that. I'm pretty sure we found the biggest, cheapest pumpkin we could at wal-mart so we were pretty proud. We also stocked up on Halloween candy even though we had no trick-or-treaters and we almost ate it all before Halloween anyways so it was a good thing.

Then finally my mom came and visited and it was so much fun!! It was so good to see her and she was just the best mom ever- she cleaned our apartment, made us dinner, did our laundry- while we were at work. It was so great and I just love her! We finally got to play Settlers of Catan, one of our favorite games (nobody else out here knows how to play...I think game-playing must be more of a Utah thing).

And we went to Kirtland, just a 2 1/2 hour drive, to see all of the church historical sites. My mom had never been there and it was neat to visit again. We saw the NK Whitney Store, Kirtland Temple, Isaac Morley farm, and John Johnson farm. AND I got to see all these wonderful sister missionaries who are serving there from Lone Peak- Abbey Harmon, Kara Wirig, and Dani Talbot. It was such a fun day!! (We took most of the pictures with my mom's camera then of course I forgot to get them on my computer so this is all I have. I promise she was there with us though...You can check out those pictures on her blog at www.alpinekleinbunch.blogspot.com)

More Hawaii pictures:)

Well now that we've got our own internet officially set up I wanted to post some of the pictures that were really meant to go in my last post! Just more of our fun trip in Hawaii...

We found a beautiful beach and no one was there! Probably cuz the water was so rough you'd drown in it but it was pretty!

This is on our boat trip, which was awesome, and the coastline was amazing

We saw the "postcard" lighthouse...bet you didn't know they used to measure lights in candlepower? Well we learned that on this trip.

And of course our perfect Hawaiian sunset!

And then we had the long trip home and long, fun waits in the airport...the joys of flying standby.

Our slightly delayed honeymoon in Hawaii...

So just in case Park City, Lake Powell, our trip across the country, and Michigan wasn't enough, we had to take one last trip before really settling down and facing reality. It was a little bit crazy because I got my job offer and they told me orientation started right when we had planned our trip to Hawaii. So after a long day of stressing, calling, organizing and eventually packing we got our trip moved up so that we'd be home in time for my orientation and we left the next morning at 7:00 am for Kauai!

I'm so glad I have a spontaneous husband who can convince me to be spontaneous and make a trip without having planned anything! (we were planning on going to Waikiki originally...) It all worked out and we ended up having an amazing trip! I have to give some credit to my mom who was on the internet all week long helping us get everything organized.

THE HIGHLIGHTS:

Visiting Pearl Harbor- so cool!

Riding in a convertible all week- we totally got hooked up and it was so great for our drives around the beautiful island!

Shaved ice- um...everyday

Boogie-boarding and Greg surfing at Hanalei Bay

Our boat trip down the beautiful NaPali Coast

Enjoying the beautiful sunset

Making a pit-stop in Utah for 24 hours- SO fun to see my family!

We had so much fun just relaxing and enjoying our last week of freedom and spending all of our time together! Now we've got jobs but that's life! Who wants to come with us next year?

p.s. Sorry this took a while and I couldn't put more pictures on but we're having internet issues that will hopefully be resolved soon!

New job!

Well life has been a little crazy the past few weeks after I got a new job and we made a wonderful trip to Kauai! I'll have to post pictures soon but we got home just in time to make it to my first day of orientation.


I'm working for Nationwide Children's Hospital, the main pediatric hospital in Columbus, and I'll be a float nurse in eleven of their clinics located around the area. For now I've just been doing orientation and sitting in a classroom for eight hours a day but I think it will be a great job once I get started in the clinic next week! It seems to be a really great hospital- I've learned about all of their awards and accomplishments this week and even though it's hard for me to imagine any place being better than Primary's, it has been ranked really well. But most importantly it allows me to work with kids which is really what I love!

I'm working the day shift so Greg and I are trying to adjust to the real world of waking up early, packing our lunches, heading to work all day, then really enjoying the time we get to spend together in the evening. But I'm really grateful for all we have and life is good!

"Take Your Wife to Work" Day!

Well now that the apartment is all organized and I've limited myself to cleaning & vacuuming only once a week, I've been to the library three times in two weeks, and applied for every RN job in Columbus...I get bored sometimes. So my amazing husband let me tag along to work with him last week (well, and a couple of times since then...) and it's actually a lot of fun to watch him paint, climb up on ladders, put decks together, and fix all the random things people call a contractor to fix.

This is the beautiful house they were painting so it was fun to take some pictures of it in the early morning fog! It was so pretty with all the green trees surrounding it...which is how it looks every time we take a drive out here and I love it! No mountains, but lots of trees!

I didn't help out much while I sat and watched and read my book but I told him I would definitely try and catch him if he fell. Luckily that wasn't necessary.

I'm so grateful for my wonderful husband who lets me follow him around all day so I don't have to be sitting home bored and alone, not to mention everything else he does for me just to make me happy every second of everyday!

Speaking of which, I came home Monday, after being gone for 2 hours, and he had made the bed, cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, loaded the dishes, done the laundry, and organized our closet. He is such a sweetheart and I love him!

Our life lately...

Some of my family and friends have asked us what there is to do or see out here in Columbus so they can come visit and well...we're still working on discovering all those exciting sites (don't worry, I hear they're here!) but we've found a lot of fun things to do!


There's a great park here and we took "the kids" (which is how we refer to the only children in our lives...our nephews and niece) for an afternoon. Greg is such a great uncle and I love watching him with the kids, who absolutely LOVE hanging out with "uncle greg" and "aunt karianne" and it's definitely good practice for us trying to keep track of a 3, 2, and 1 yr old!

This is Brady, the oldest, who just started preschool!

Baby Kylie will be 2 this December and loves to get into everything but she's sure cute so we love her! And Jack is 2- I didn't really get a good picture of him but he's below playing tether-ball with Greg and Brady.


Then Greg encouraged me to run this 5K that the Boy Scouts were putting together on Labor Day and it was a lot of fun! He was so supportive and even woke up early on his day-off to come cheer me on and stand in the rain that of course started right as the race did. I got a free t-shirt (after a $20 donation, of course) and good exercise in the pouring rain along a beautiful river! While there was no proposal at the end, having a husband waiting there was even better!

Our Apartment in Ohio!

Well we've finally got our apartment mostly organized so I figured I'd post some pictures so you all can see where we live! We have a two bedroom apartment (and we've already filled up our extra bedroom with our storage so it's a good thing) right above the model and on the end so it stays pretty nice and quiet here.

It was kind of a disaster for a few days when we first moved our stuff in and we were sleeping on the couch-bed for a while but we survived and after a few days of Greg at work and me without a job we got everything put together.

Thanks to Greg's parents who donated their nice couches and sweet HD-TV (even if they're regretting it now:), and Grandma and Grandpa Callison for the bed, and everyone else here in Ohio who provided our kitchen table, washer and dryer, and dressers. And thanks to my parents for the beautiful bedding! We've hardly had to buy anything so that's been great.

So that's it! Now you all just need to come and visit :)

The Wedding!

So I'm new at this whole blog thing but now that we're far away from lots of you I wanted to start this so you can see some of the fun things going on in our lives here in Columbus, Ohio! Thanks to my mom for helping me set this up and Cal, I'm definitely going to need your help with this...


But here are a few pictures from the wedding. It was a perfect day...more than I'd ever dreamed of for my wedding day!

The weather was great (although Greg would probably disagree for a while when we were taking pictures and he was in a tux), the ceremony was amazing, all my favorite people were there all day, the yard and all the decorations were beautiful, our photographer was great, our cake turned out perfect, everything was so much fun, and I married the best man in the whole world!

I am so grateful for my family and friends and all that they did to make the day perfect but especially my dad who created a beautiful yard for a reception and my mom for completely taking charge and organizing, planning, and decorating for our perfect day! I love you guys!