Christmas Card Time...

It's that time of year again, not to stamp 50-100 Christmas cards (although, I admire those who do!), but to type out our anual Christmas blog post that takes the place of our yearly mailed Christmas letter.

I (Eryn) will write first. This year has been eventful to say the least! First, I have decided to take on a new career... well, it was counseling that I went to school for in the first place, but I kindof sidestepped that for a while and decided to bake. We prayed and felt that God gave us the go-ahead to both be 26 and 28 year old students. So I quit my job at the bakery and am full-time in school. It feels strange sometimes walking up to the movie theater and saying, "Two student tickets please." But we don't complain about the discounts! So far, I have felt really blessed by Colorado Christian University and my masters program in counseling. My teachers are great and very experienced.

This year we have felt more homesick for the South, but we had a great vacation to YellowStone with my mom and grandparents and also got to go to visit David's family for a while when his sister, Sarah, got married. (I did the cake... see posts from Sept. for pics:) I got to go home for Thanksgiving, and David made it home for a 1 day whirlwind trip getting to visit with my dad and my mom's family.

Our health has been up and down all year. David had a malaria scare, and currently has mono! I had surgery, and I think we have basically traded off who is going to be sick with something from week to week. Well, it hasn't been that bad, but we have definitely had some interesting times of playing who is going to get up and get that (meaning I or David want something but don't feel like getting it, so we just wait each other out until someone finaly gives:).

We did get to have a wonderful vacation together this year in Clearwater Beach, FL. David's brother-in-law's parents graciously let us stay in their condo for a week. It was heaven! One day it was raining and we just stayed in bed all day and watched movies. The relaxation and the ocean helped us get back to the grindstone.



David here, and i just thought I'd add a little tidbit of my own. Eryn pretty much covered everything. I must add, however, that this has been a really hard year for us. We're fine, and really blessed. And really, the fact that we're having a hard year should be even more of a comforting read than all of the good stuff, because it makes the truth of God's relationship with us more apparent: not that he will make the path easy for us, but that he will give us the right feet to deal with the difficult path that is before us. Here is the quick run down: my job is insanely stressful, we have both been sick a lot, we have no money, we don't have a good church home, and we miss our family and friends terribly. However, God has also strengthened our faith, drawn us closer to each other, taught us about trust in him, proven himself (o'er and o'er, as they say), and overall made us more into his image, which, lets be honest, is pretty great. So, although I'm sure we'll have great blogs in the future about how our fifth child just won the junior surf competition on the north shore of Oahu, where our church plant has just passed the 5 million attendance mark, for the time being, we can all be glad of the truths that Eryn and I have learned about trying to put together a departmental seminar while your wife writes three papers, after which you eat a bowl of Ramen noodles, check how big your neck has swollen from mono, get ready to take your malaria medicine, look online for a church to try, all while trying not to think about what your passive aggressive boss will say about all the time you missed from your various tropical diseases (obviously a little exaggeration was used in that last part, as well as a liberal use of the run-on sentence)....and how God has used those things to mold us.

(Eryn again) You can see why I didn't want to follow that:) I feel the need to add that our family truly blesses us through gifts of money, necessities, and good comforting conversation. We do feel that God uses our friends here and those we keep in touch with as well as family to bless us.

We are at the halfway point in our stay here in Colorado and we still love it, but miss our family and friends terribly! We hope you all are doing well and we look forward to one day being in closer proximity to all of you.

Love,
David and Eryn Jones

Update on the cold!

Today, the national weather service said that this morning the temp here in Fort Collins was 5 degrees colder than the North Pole! So basically, I wish I was haning out with Santa right about now. It's supposed to get to be -19 tonight.......ahhhhhhhh!

Lots to blog about...

I will begin by saying that it is NEGATIVE THIRTEEN DEGREES RIGHT NOW! Windchill: -29!!! I really don't think it has ever been this cold here!



With that being said, I have dicided to write about some things that are fun about the snow (trying to convice myself that snow is fun). I know all you people from the south thing I'm crazy for not liking snow right now, but it kind of looses its appeal after it snows two or three times a week.



So, that being said, fun things about snow........

First is a picture of what I like to call a "Car-hawk", a mohawk on a car. Now you can't get the full effect because it's dark and the car is white, but it looks kind of funny when you have 8" on your car and then you brush off all you can reach and there is a mohawk looking thing on the top of the car! I tried to get a better picture of the one on our car that goes all the way to the bumper, but my camera died, you get the idea anyways.

The evergreens are really pretty when it snows.....and this picture was taken at 4 pm! Not 8 pm like it looks, another joy of living in Colorado: short, short winter days (but the summer days are extra long so that's nice).



I just liked this pic of our mailbox:)


David's Christmas Wrapping Skills

David is awesome at wrapping presents. I would like to treat you all to some pictures of his Chrismas wrappings...

This one is my favorite, in case you can't see- he gave the gift a "santa hat"


Cafe Jones

When you live in a really small home, you have to make do. Since we will be living like this for a couple more years, I decided to problem solve. We currently have nowhere to eat in our house. We have, in the past, put the table somewhere in the living room- but it always felt too crowded. So I decided to clean out the guest bedroom and put the table in there and kind of make a private dining room out of it. Than thanks to my mom, I have really cute Christmas table decorations. Here are some pics...

This one gives you a good idea of the lighting- the rest have a flash, so you can't tell as well

Turkey Day

I got to go home for Thanksgiving week this year to visit my mom's family and my dad's family. David was going to be at home and work all week here in Colorado. On Wednesday night, my dad, stepmom, brother, sister, and me went to see a movie. When I was coming out of the movie, I was supposed to meet some friends who had just gone to pick up their cousin, "Trevor", from the airport. When I called them after the movie I turn around and saw this guy with an Alabama hat running toward me- turns out "Trevor" was really David Jones. So David came home and surprised us all. My grandma and grandpa (thank you both so much!) knew, but no one else did.

So we had Thanksgiving lunch with my dad and stepmom's family, and then we traveled to Memphis for a meal of sloppy joes and pizza with my mom's family. My mom was really surprised. Then we got up the next morning at 4:30 to take David to the airport! That part was not fun.

Here are some pictures we took on my stepmom's parents land.

Procrastinating.....

So I am supposed to be writing a paper right now. I have one paper down, and 1 paper, a presentation, a really long paper, and studying for a midterm to go! This week is a busy one. I feel like I am back in the second grade and I have no idea what the homework assignment is or how to do it and my mom (or, in this case David:) has to help me figure it out. So you know when you got the MLA book in college and it explained exactly how you were supposed to write a research paper? Well I have to write in APA style, and now they seem to think that you are actually smart and they don't give you the 10 different examples of citations so you can figure it out. I have a question about every other minute, so I hand the APA book to David and let him help me figure it out!

Anyways, this post is about CHRISTMAS!!! I have resigned myself to be "that girl" who cannot wait to put up the tree. Last year I put it up early November, and this year I did the same. I decided to dedicate this post to memories through ornaments... enjoy.
Heres the tree...I love my tree, I think my favorite part is the garland...I got almost everything on the tree and the tree itself from a shower by thrown by my good friends Emily, Melissa, Mandi, Kara, and their moms!

This ones for Phil...I mean I'm not really a fan but when he cried at that press conference, I really felt for the man. Isn't this sweet, these ornaments go so well toegther:)

Stockings and decor...

This Willow Creek nativity set was a wedding gift from my dad's secretary, Jennifer- I like how simple it is. It makes me think it's more realistic than other nativity sets with a baby Jesus wrapped in gold and in a tricked out expensive designer manger

Our first Christmas together, David and I decided to start a tradition of picking out one ornament together (when we have kids they will get to pick out one and fight about it in the store:) This is our ornament from that first Christmas we were married.

This ornament I got in London at Harrod's when I went to tour Europe with my friends who did HUF

My old boss, Andrea, gave me this ornament... I like how she is carrying pastries:)

So the first time David met my mom, he said that he wanted to get a motor cycle one day. Strangely my mom seemed to support him! So this year for his birthday, he got this one...

Thanks to Maurine for letting go of this one, a childhood ornament of David's

self explanatory, got it before we got married. Since we got married in Jan, we got some cool ornaments like this one for the Christmas before.


Ok, I gotta mention the info-mercial I am watching while I type this. Has anyone ever heard of the Flavor Wave oven? It looks awesome! It's this plastic portable oven that can sit on your countertop and it cooks stuff thats frozen in HALF the time of your oven, and because of the infrared flavor waves, the food is jucier and tastes better than if you cooked it in your microwave or oven. AND if you act now, it's only $133 instead of $800 normally! Go to www.thane.com to get yours now:)

Actually, seriously, I think I want this thing!

"Old" School

Pardon the pun, but I am older, and I am going to school now. My neighbor took my first day of school pic for me in all the fashion of the olden days-- in front of the door ready to go conquer the world. School is going well. It is a TON of reading, but I enjoy it. Next semester I am going to try to take 15 hours! If anyone has ever gone to grad school- they know that this is a feat... but I want to be done by the time we need to leave Colorado so that my husband doesn't have to move without me!

Please excuse the goofieness... and see my new post below!

Fall in Colorado

Ok, so I promise that I will be more faithful at posting. We just got the internet, so I'm up and running. Alot has been going on, so I will try to catch you up in one post. Here goes....

First, every year I think about how awesome the leaves look here when fall time comes, but by the time I remember to put my camera in the car, the trees are leaveless! So here are some pics of the fall scenes we have gotten on camera in the past three years....

(Above) This was from the first fall we were here, thought it was worthy of reposting
(Below) These are taken around our neighborhood.

Also, David turned 28 on Halloween. We had a fun party with our neighborhood. We weren't going to dress up, but I had a random last minute idea. (Not a very original one, because I'm sure everybody and their grandma went as a politician.) We went as Sarah Palin and John McCain....I even sported the peep-toe shoes that Sarah wears (although hers are a cute red or maybe black)... I must admit that the girl has got style. Poor David, when he got home I threw him in a suit and proceeded to douse his hair in baby powder and hairspray since he has A TON more hair than John (which we found out that the two DONT mix...it turned into this plastery goo on his head and he ended up looking more like Albert Einstein :).

These are my version of "peep toe" shoes :)

Trying to show that my hair looks somewhat like hers, maybe a funkier version

Einstein McCain and Lisa Loeb Palin :)

Quick Anecdote

I know I haven't blogged in a while, but I wanted to post a quick little story about the other day. So David called on his way home from work and this is how it went:
Phone rings and I answer...
David: "Hey, is this Eryn Agee?"
Me: (sort of laughing, sort of playing along) "Yes."
David: "Hey, I don't know if you remember me, but we met at Alyson and Kelee's house, and I was wondering if you wanted to maybe go out with me today."
Me: (not passing up a chance for a possible date) "Sure"
David: "Well, uh, great. I guess I'll just pick you up in fifteen minutes."

Moments later, the doorbell rings (and I must admit all the feelings one has when dating, nervousness, constant double checking on how you look in the mirror-- totally came back to me-- I don't miss those days). I answered the door and we exchanged small talk. Then we walked to the car, David opened my door and this is what he said:
"Sorry, I didn't have time to clean the car out, and my roommate is pretty messy!"

Then I proceeded to hit him and the little game was over, but I will admit that the car is my main area of messiness and I am working on that:)

Sarah's Wedding Festivities

David's younger sister, Sarah, married Chris Nicholson on Sept 6th. We got to spend the week with all of David's family and we also made the cake. Yes, I say "we" because David was my very talented sous chef for the week. He was VERY helpful and I think he enjoyed himself a lot! Here are some pics.
Lingerie Shower, all the Jones/former Jones women:


Rehearsal Dinner (Hawiian Theme with AMAZING food!).....



The Wedding was at a Georgia Plantation Home, and even thought the train ran by at least three times during the wedding, the ceremony was sweet and beautiful
The House:

Sarah, Chris, and the flower girls and "ring bearers" even though the didn't exacty carry anything...still cute:

The whole wedding party:

Sweet Baby Isaac in his wedding attire:

The Reception:
The cakes.......was supposed to be a five tiered one, but that didn't quite work out:) Pretty satisfied with the final product, though


This is the Groom's Cake made by Chris' mom, Nana, and Grandpa: all the placed he has been to in Africa

They had a line dancing instructor come to the reception and teach us new line dances, afterward, we all did the electric slide and the cha-cha slide. I have to say that the award for the best dancer of the night went to David, surprisingly!


Trying to get this dance

The send off was set to giant sparklers...there they go.....