We made it through the holidays! I didn't know what kind of attitude I would have by the time Christmas came, I had seen and dealt with so much Christmas at work. I just wanted a relaxed and calm break. It was our first Christmas with Blake home! FUN Christmas Eve was so nice at my Grandma and Grandpa Freeman's house. I got off work around 4:30 and was at the family party 30 min later! But there was good food and good family so it was all worth it. We missed Jenna tho! Poor girl had to work on Christmas Eve. Santa came and gave us all our gifts and we read the Nativity story. After all the fun, we went home and went to....sleep!! I was so excited for that!


Christmas day started at my mom's and we had delicious eggy burros for breakfast. Then we went and opened presents! My mom got Josh all the things that he loves! A tent to go camping, wood for fires, and a sudoku book with pencils. We got a picture of the temple from her too and it's beautiful.
Josh surprised me with a huge gift which I love! He got me a desktop computer that has the computer in the monitor and.... it's a touchscreen! Now I can blog more...maybe. I'll try. He's the greatest. He always thinks his gifts for me are so lame but they're the best.


We then headed over to the Johnsons for breakfast #2. French toast which is one of my favorites so ate there too. We love going over to the Johnsons... there's always something going on there. Julianne's family, Jaren & Alexa, Jed & Melanie, Gator & Heather, Jeremy & his girls, Jake, and Justin were all there. We missed seeing Jaime and all her family. And we always miss Jenny and her family. Can't wait to see her in the summer tho!



After the Johnsons, we headed over to my Grandma Ewart's house for breakfast #3! Which I also ate. It was also delicious. We hung out for a while and opened presents. I got a nice watch and bracelet from my dad and Josh got a really good book.
It was a nice Christmas... just not long enough.

We spent New Year's Eve with Jaren and Alexa out by the fire. We spent a few hours out in the freezing cold but it was nice and relaxing. I must be getting old tho cause I think I would've rather gone to sleep. At midnight we saw the countdown on tv and had some sparkling cider. Jaren tried to ride his dirt bike with fire crackers tied to it. But it didn't work out so well.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (Belated of course, I'll never be on time with my blogs)

We had a crazy Friday night. My favorite little guy, Mac, came to show us his Halloween costume. He was a cow and it was so cute! He wouldn't leave it on for very long but I loved it. We all went to see Grandma and Grandpa Freeman and hung out there for a while. Grandpa told me he had some expensive stuff locked up in the shed right by us and that he wasn't sure if anyone saw him put it in there... so we needed to watch out for it. I told Josh about it when he got home and then he started away on his never ending homework. I looked out the window and saw a car over by the Orange Patch and told Josh. It wasn't a big deal but then... about a half hour later our door handle jiggles, like someone was trying to open our door. So we got a little nervous and Josh got his shotgun. We heard a knock and Josh asked who it was but there was no answer. Then we heard a knock on the other side of the apartment and Josh asked louder who it was. Still no answer. So he takes his shotgun out the door and looks around. No one was there so he turned around another corner and saw someone wearing a mask and he lifted his gun. Then... we hear "Wait Josh, it's just me." She takes off the mask and come to find out it was two of my 17 year old girl cousins and their friend. Poor Josh was so nervous and felt so bad, he couldn't get his hands to stop shaking for so long. He didn't sleep a wink all night either; he felt so stinkin bad! I'm so glad nothing happened, but our house is out in the middle of nowhere. If anyone comes out there it's usually to steal something or be crazy. We rarely get visitors so we had no idea. And we forgot it was Halloween weekend. So... I don't think we'll ever get visitors again.

On to happier things, Josh had drill this weekend and found out that he got taken off the deployment list. So as of now he's not going. I am happy but I had accepted it and was prepping for it. They change things way too much in the Marines and it makes it hard on my emotions. In the back of my mind, I still feel like he's gonna go. So I'm not totally accepting that he's not going. We had the ball too and we got our pictures taken this time so maybe I'll post them. If they look good.

Today was my first day in Young Womens. I was called to be the 3rd counselor, yes we have 3. We have the Arboleda Branch with us so one is from the branch. I'm the counselor over the Beehives and I'm scared to death! I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm sooo under qualified. I met the girls for the first time today and they seem like the funnest and sweetest girls but I'm so scared they're not going to like me or they'll think I'm boring. And then, every other leader in Young Womens seems so talented and amazing. I can't think of anything I'm good at that I can teach these girls. I almost cried a few times today thinking about my calling. Other people probably think this job is a piece of cake but I'm not too confident in my leadership abilities. It's a very scary thing for me but I hope that I can make the best of it and put so much into my calling. I want to make it the best for these girls and I hope I can become a better person through the experiences I'll have with them. I know it's going to be so fun and I'll love being in YW. We'll see how it goes!

So, remember when I gave Josh the duty of updating the blog for me? Well, neither of us are very good at it. Josh is always doing homework or Marine stuff. I feel bad that he's so stressed out and there's nothing I can do about it. I don't understand anything he's learning in school. Hopefully this will end soon.

Other than that, I went to my grandma's cabin in Greer for Conference weekend and it was soo nice, other than missing Josh. I think that part was made worse cause I was thinking about how I'm going to miss him so much when he leaves for his deployment.

But conference was so nice. I loved all the talks and it was so uplifting! By the time conference comes around, I think it is so needed. With all the bad things going on in the world, I need to be reminded of all the good things too. I've always taken conference for granted and I regret not taking advantage of the messages from our church leaders in the past.

Anyway, while watching a session of conference, I was laying on the ground after putting a bunch of over sized Lego's together for my nephew Mac. I stopped paying attention to him and that must have made him very mad, cause all of a sudden my face started throbbing with pain and tears came uncontrollably out of my eyes.

He threw it at my face! I couldn't help the crying; I really tried to stop. My crying made Mac feel bad and so he started crying. During the pain, I tried to comfort Mac and make him feel a little better.

So now... for the first time in my life, I have a black eye. Given to me by a 22 month old. It's not that bad of one, but still it's a first for me.

He's Home!

I really want to make a goal to not go 3 months without making a new blog post, but I can't make any promises. Not that people look at this thing anymore. I'm not reliable at all. But I did have something happen that was exciting enough to put on here.

My brother Blake came home from his mission!!!

He came home on September 15 at 9:45 AM. It was such a great day and we worked SO hard for that day. We redid his and Bryce's room, a TON of yard work, a lot of fixes to my mom's house, sign making, and shopping. We were pretty much exhausted by the time he got here, but it was all worth it.

We were at the airport pretty early (just in case the plane came an hour early, right mom?) and saw the plane come in to the terminal. So as we were watching people come through a guy walks by me and says "He's coming" and that made us a little more nervous.

Then we saw this!

And my mom ran to do this....

And then he came over to the huge mass of people waiting for him

Thought I'd take a picture showing his plane had officially ARRIVED! It's the top line flight 2915

We worked for HOURS on these and he didn't even notice them.
They're cute though and that's what really matters.

This is the nice flight attendant that was with Blake the entire time he was traveling.
All the way from Argentina to Arizona

Blake and Bryce... aww cute!

Blake and Grandpa Freeman

Blake and Grandma Freeman... I think this picture is so nice.
We all love our grandparents so much!!

Blake and Dad

Blake and Grandma Ewart

Blake and Brady... they're not kissing each other on the cheek, promise,
my camera has a delay on it. Looks like it tho, gross

Weston! and Blake

Mac met Uncle Blake for the first time. He's still getting used to Blake,
he's only known him as a picture til now but it's getting better.

Brenner and Blake

Just going around the circle

Doesn't he look so good?!

We're so excited to have him home. We've missed him but we're so proud of him for serving a mission. Welcome Home Elder Smith!

Hey it's me, Emily, the slacker. I'm back for just a short post dedicated to my hubby! Josh has been at Corporal's Course out in Glendale for a week and a half now I miss him so much! You'd think 2 weeks wouldn't phase me at all but it does.

So when Josh was in Africa he was talking about being promoted to Corporal and he couldn't because someone didn't sign his paper when he was promoted to Lance Corporal. That means he lost like 4 months of time to raise his score. Our luck isn't so good.. Anyways, he missed the cutting score by 2 Points! It's so frustrating. Eventually he was promoted and it's been a while since then.

A month or two ago he was going to be put in for a meritorious promotion and he spent a lot of time getting all the papers in order and getting his picture taken. After a few weeks we found out that admin lost his picture! Again... our luck isn't so good.

Then... we were waiting for Friday for the cutting score to come out to see if he was going to be promoted to Sergeant. He called me Tuesday to tell me that someone told him the scores came out and he missed it by 3 points. We were both bummed! I couldn't believe that this would happen again. I felt so bad for him. After I got off of work he called to tell me that the guy was wrong and he was 3 points over! I was soooo excited! He's going to be promoted in July and he'll be Sergeant Johnson. I'm probably more excited than most about this but it seems like he's always trying so hard and things don't always work out. But it did this time! Anyways I'm so proud of him and can't wait to see him on Monday!

P.S. i'm not totally sure of the order of everything in the story but I tried!

The Southern Voice

I have to do a little bit of back-tracking. Since Emily and I don't have any children yet and are therefore a little more free than most parents we have always tried to go somewhere after each semester just to catch up on the time together that we missed because of work, school, studying, and the ever-present Marines. Some of these trips out of town have been more extravagant (Brazil) while others have been quiet and simple (camping). Well, as this past semester was drawing to a close I realized that we hadn't thought of or planned anything to do yet. I told Emily not to worry about it and that I'd think of something and surprise her with it. So...the pressure was on. It took me about a week to come up with something and still another week to work out the logistics. What was it? Tickets to the Tim McGraw/Lady Antebellum concert. Where? Atlanta.

You may be wondering why the heck we would go all the way to Atlanta for a concert. My sister and her family just happens to live an hour south of Atlanta so I figured we could spend a little time visiting them. And, Emily absolutely loves Lady Antebellum so I thought that she would really enjoy the experience of seeing her favorite country group perform live for thousands of drunk southerners and at least two sober Mormons. Then she could say she went to the 2010 Southern Voice Tour in the South.

We flew to Atlanta on a Friday and drove to Warner Robbins where my sister lives. We spent the rest of the day and the next morning hanging out with them and meeting her new baby. It was a lot of fun seeing her and her family. Her 4-year-old, Gavin, didn't remember me so it was easy to play with him since he doesn't remember how bad I teased him when they lived in Arizona.

On Saturday, we drove back to Atlanta and checked into our hotel. Since we weren't going to have enough time before the concert to do a whole lot we had to choose between visiting the Coca-Cola factory or the Atlanta Aquarium. After much debate we finally decided on the aquarium and spent more than an hour figuring out how to get there and where to park. This being accomplished we went inside and spent another hour with our faces pressed up against the glass like two little kids gaping at the HUGE fishes, sting-rays, and whales. I even got to touch the slimy wing of a baby sting-ray but just missed the baby shark by a few inches.

Traffic on the way to the concert was way, and I mean WAY crazier than I thought it was going to be so we had to settle on a very romantic gas station for dinner. Considering the fact that I proposed in a parking garage, the gas station didn't seem all that bad...besides, she's stuck with me. After parking in a dark corner of a suspicious parking lot and paying the even more suspicious parking attendant we finally made our way to the gates of Aaron's Amphitheatre for the show. I never thought I'd see my shy, timid Emily party but something about seeing her favorite band in concert transformed my little Nervous Nelly into a dancing, singing country girl. My favorite part was watching the drunk, shirt-less redneck guys trip on themselves while flirting with the sauced up and booted Georgian girls.

Once Tim McGraw was done singing his hair extensioned head off we made our way to the car and to my surprise, it was still there and not a single window was broken. Emily got a shirt or two to commemorate the occasion and we made it safely home to the desert the next morning. Despite a few hick-ups in my plans the trip went fairly well. I'm pretty sure Emily had fun and I didn't have to knock anybody out for feeling her up at the concert.

My Friend

I have to start this post by saying to the few people who still read this blog that, by the request of Emily, the illustrious duty of updating our few loyal followers on the events of our lives via blog has fallen to her far worse half....me. If you don't know who I am then you're probably better off by just knowing my wonderfully sweet wife. Since this is my first of however many posts Emily wants me to do, I find it fitting that I take a little time to brag.

The scriptures say that men should cleave unto their wives...the general understanding of that phrase is that men should commit themselves completely. In my opinion, that phrase should have been translated a little differently. It should have said something like, "Men should cleave unto their wives and speedily do whatever is desired by them for thou shalt probably be better off anyways idiot." And so it is that I am sitting here trying desperately to put into words on a computer screen what I feel in the deepest depths of my soul. Besides, who could say no to Emily?

For those lucky people who have had the privilege to get to know Emily and for those not-so-lucky people who have had the misfortune of meeting me, you are probably just as confused as I am that she conceded her eternal future to me. She is the sweetest, most gentle, most kind, most loveable, most forgiving, most patient, and most beautiful girl I've ever known and ever heard of. I used to think that I must have done something extraordinary to deserve an eternal companion like her but now I know that my Father in Heaven knew that in order to bring out my full, meager potential I would need a girl by my side who was as close to perfection as anyone can be. She knows literally everything about me and still insists on loving me. I thank The Lord every day for that great gift.

If you know me at all, you know that it is no small thing for me to bare my soul and expose my feelings like this.I promise to the reader that I will post more about our everyday lives but I wanted to put into words at least a portion of the gratitude I feel for the never-ending privilege it is to live every day with Emily smiling at me. She's my wife, my sweetheart, and my best friend. I love her.