Our new find

Over Thanksgiving break, Ja was looking around his dads office for a computer cord. In that searching he came upon a nice Canon camera. He asked his dad about it only to find out that Greg forgot he had it! After much discussion and contemplation, we took the camera home to be put to use. Ja and I had fun with it at our first attempt to take great pictures. Here's what we came up with.

New happenings

We had a great Thanksgiving break in La Canada. We were able to spend 5 whole days there in the sunny warm weather. It did rain a little, but we didn't really go outside that day. Everything we had to eat was great. 

I drove to Pleasant  Grove today for work only to find out that Management had laid off of the temporary workers. I'm so glad someone told me this before I got up early and drove all the way to Pleasant Grove. Actually, I was a little sad to not have work anymore, but it's great timing since Christmas is coming up and we will be moving in 3 weeks. 

Today I decorated Grandma's house for Christmas. I went to Wal-mart and bought her a christmas tree, ornaments, and tree skirt. She had a few Nativity sets and we had a few other Christmas decorations. Grandma sat as I decorated the tree. She thinks it's beautiful and it brightened up her day.

Our new friend Truman

My good friend Chelsey had her baby boy last week, so Ja and I went to visit them in the hospital. Truman was so adorable! I instantly fell in love with the little guy. I haven't seen a two day old baby in a long time so I've forgotten how small they are. He has a perfect face and lots of dark hair. So, interestingly enough, I had a dream last thursday night that Chelsey had her baby and that he had dark hair. I woke up and thought, "That's weird, neither Chelsey or Andrew have dark hair." Not only did she give birth Friday morning, but he had dark hair.

Chelsey had a pretty hard labor; there were two unexpected twists, but she survived and she's still happy. I'm pretty much terrified of giving birth (I haven't figured out if it's from the pain or being in a hospital), so if Chelsey can have such a rough time and make it through, I think I can. Thanks for the encouragement Chelsey!

My trip to California

Somehow I had acquired enough Southwest points to earn a free flight, so I decided to take a little vacation and visit my family. Ja went to Virginia for a job interview the same day so we were able to go to the airport together.

The first night at home we had dinner with both sets of grandparents.

Grandma & Grandpa Francis

Grandma & Grandpa Seymour

The next day we went to the Long Beach Aquarium. That place is awesome! It's a well stocked aquarium and very well maintained. There is so much to do and look at. 

In the middle of the day we took a 2 1/2 hour trip on the open ocean. We saw the Queen Mary, the Long Beach port, seals, sea lions, and two whales! None of us had seen whales before so that was pretty cool to see. We followed them around for about a 1/2 hour. I didn't take pictures of them, but they were very large and gray. The captain said they were fin whales.

Wednesday I went shopping and got a few things like new makeup and a couple shirts. At night I went to the musical Happy Days with Grandma and Grandma Seymour. I've only seen a couple episodes of the show so I didn't always get the jokes. Sometimes everyone else in the theater would laugh at a line so I figured it was a joke from the show. I had a good time though.

Thursday my mom and I went to breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa Francis. Then it was more shopping. At night I went to "Spa night" at Enrichment. It was fun to see old friends and leaders there. I'm glad I was sort of a good teenager so people are still excited to see me come back home and visit with me.

Friday my dad took me to get new running shoes. It's so great to have new running shoes. You don't notice that your old ones are old until you try new shoes on. Later that night, Jill, Kenny and his girlfriend Lisa, and I went to In-N-out for dinner then saw Madagascar 2. The movie had some good parts and funny lines, but I think seeing it once was good enough.

Then it was time to go home Saturday. I forgot my jacket in the trunk, luckily my mom wasn't too far away so she could bring it back to me. It was 85 degrees so I didn't even think about having a jacket! I also left two shirts hanging in the garage, luckily we'll be back in a week!

My 23rd Birthday

My birthday is usually around election day, and this year it happened to be on election day. Because of this we decided to have people come over and watch the election results on TV. Ja made up some brithday/political games for us to play. We had pin the tail on the donkey or elephant, guess who's going to be the next president, and guess if prop 8 will pass or not. I picked a name from the jar from the people who guessed Obama would win to win some cookies. Mike West was the winner, the only non-US citizen there. He felt bad for winning because he wrote his name 3 times, once for his wife, and another for his baby son. He let us keep the cookies to enjoy. 

My friend Becca made a wonderful lemon cinnamon cake for me. It was very delicious. And to top everything off, we continued the DeVore tradition of singing around the birthday person at the table. 

 

Ja surprised me when I came home from work with all the birthday decorations.

Of course I was bound to get at least one political birthday card. This was from Ja, I thought it was pretty funny.

Thanks for all of you who came! I had a great time and it's so nice knowing I have so many great friends.

Costume Craze

I started working at Costume Craze on September 11. A day that doesn't settle well with many Americans. Little did I know it would be a day I will always remember for different reasons. The first few days of work weren't bad; I talked to normal people, took orders for people and made some friends at work. Then as October started things started to get progressively worse. I had to answer more phone calls, reply to more emails, and inspect more returned costumes. Then all hell broke loose. 

People are "absolutely ridiculous" (a favorite saying from irate customers) about their costumes. I'v never had so many swear words directed at me before. When people would start yelling and swearing at me I wanted to tell ask them, "You know that getting this costume isn't a life or death situation right?" They would then reply saying how horrible the customer service is and go on and on about how I have ruined their sons Halloween, and I would say, "Then why are you acting like this!!" I personally ruined so many children's Halloweens. I know, I'm a horrible person. Of course it's not their parents fault who order the day before Halloween and their daughter doesn't have a costume because it didn't fit right. And of course it's not the dad's fault for entering the wrong billing address so his credit card was declined so the costumes never shipped out and he's just checking up on things the day before Halloween. Of course he "didn't" get the email we sent him two weeks ago to let him know the credit card was declined. Oh, my own kids have been wished a horrible Halloween by a swearing maniac because I ruined her Halloween.

There were problems that were caused by Costume Craze. For some reason 100's of orders never shipped out and the customer's weren't notified. (For the record the warehouse didn't tell Customer Service either.) Or the computer accidently intercepted a few packages for no reason. The packages got sent back to us making some people miss their parties. I would be a very upset customer if that happened to me. Even if things like this happen there's no reason to swear and use the dirtiest language you can muster. 

Then a miracle happened. Halloween was over! I didn't think I would live to see the day! Along with Halloween went all the crazy people. Well, I shouldn't say all, most of the crazy people. We still get a few nuts calling in. Today I answered the phone, "Hi this is Laura. How can I help you?" And the man answered, "I don't think there's a damn thing you can do to help me." I knew right off the bat it wasn't going to be a good phone call. 

However, after all this craziness, I came to enjoy the job. I was very ready to quit on Halloween. I was absolutely sick of hearing irresponsible people call in and try to blame everything on us. (My favorite line: "Oh so it's my fault I didn't read the terms and conditions?!" She wanted to return a wig, which we don't allow, and each customer has to comply with the term and conditions when placing an order. So of course it's our fault she didn't read them.) Halloween day was actually...fun. I started to enjoy the job again. And now it's really fun because, instead of getting 2000+ phone calls a day, we are down to 100. Now I can actually talk to my coworkers and have a break now and then. 

We had a Customer Service party last night were we got together for dinner and told funny stories about customers. I found out that one lady called back after talking to me and demanded she talk to a supervisor. She insisted that I laughed in her face and humiliated her daughter. Genevieve looked at the notes and noticed that I was the last one to talk to her and knew I wouldn't do something like that. The nerve of some people. (For the record I did have to hold in laughter from this lady because she said her daughter couldn't get the costume over her head and it left a funny picture in my mind. But I would never laugh out loud at a customer.) I was crying from laughing so hard at funny customer stories. We had a really good time being outside of Costume Craze.

After all of that, I've decided to continue working there until we move in December. My Manager asked if I wanted to stay on and I obliged. Now that the job is fun I want to stay so I don't have to search for another job. During the Halloween season we lost so many Customer Service employees. They were dropping like flies. Most of them left because they couldn't handle being yelled at and sworn at all day. I don't blame them. I don't know how I survived alive. There were 6 employees that were starting the day I started working. I was the only one that made it to Halloween. We had customers waiting on hold for 7 or 8 minutes because there were so many calls and so little employees. 

 

I'm actually proud of myself for sticking through it. There were many days I wanted to quit because I couldn't handle crazy people anymore. But I stayed. I sat through phone call after phone call of annoyed people asking me questions I couldn't answer. I took care of angry customers and talked them through situations. As Ja said, now I'll know how to tell people no, and how to reason with crazies, and to stand up for myself.  If anything this job has taught me a few things, how being a nice and understanding customer is so important, how unimportant things like costumes are to me but they are very important to other people, and that I never want to work customer service again. Sadly this job was probably one of the hardest things I've had to do in my life.

Halloween Festivities

We had two rounds of pumpkin carving this year. We carved pumpkins for our date friday night. We drove over to the wonderful Days Market and picked out our pumpkins for 12 cents a pound. Grandma didn't want to carve one herself so I carved one for her. She choose the monkey face pattern, Ja choose the haunted house and I choose the ghost. I was pretty impressed with the Ja's haunted house because it was really detailed. 

After we placed the pumpkins outside and lit them, Ja noticed the empty flower bed next to the door. His imagination got a hold of him because he then wanted to make a whole Halloween scene in the dirt. The next day we made our stuffed man and found him a seat so he could watch all the trick-or-treaters. We then made tombstones out of cardboard and foil. Thanks to the Haunted Mansion we wrote some funny sayings on them. 

"Here lies Fred, a big ol' rock fell on his head." "Here lies headless, footless Joe. How he died we do not know." "Here rests Wathel R. Bender, he rode to glory on a fender." "In memoriam Uncle Myall, here you'll lie for quite a while." 

Then for family home evening we carved three more pumpkins. Ja cleaned them out and I carved them. It was pretty quick process. We bought a pumpkin carving kit that has glue to put on the pumpkin so you can glue the pattern, carve it, then peel it off. It was much nicer than poking holes then carving the pumpkin. We got a kick out of our little scene. On Halloween we downloaded a scary Halloween song and played it from our ipod out the window to scare people. 

We had great fun on Halloween night thanks to James. We had some friends come over to watch a scary movie. Our friend James came as a vampire and his costume was so good we couldn't let him go to waste. While we waited for another couple to come, we had James sit outside and hold a bowl of candy. We patiently waited for unassuming trick-or-treaters to come and think James was a dummy. One group stopped and discussed him being real or not. One girl was a little skeptical so she slowly reached her hand into the bowl. As soon as she grabbed the candy James yelled "Boo!" She screamed and jumped back. Ja, Amy (James' wife), and I watched from across the street. When our friends Joe and Rozaura arrived we had them walk to the front door so they could get some candy. Rozaura thought it was a great dummy and looked really close at James. Right then he yelled "boo" and she screamed for about 10 seconds all the while stomping her feet on the ground. It was so funny and made Halloween worth it. We didn't have too many trick-or-treaters come by, but we had fun with the ones who did.

The Vampire, the girl he bit, Ali G, a flower, and the bee who pollenated the flower.

Ali G and the vampire/zombie. 

More Scrapbooking layouts

It's been awhile, but here are more of my layouts.

A Really Funny Story

Last weekend my brother-in-law went on his first father and sons outing with all three of his boys. It made for a really funny story and you can read it here. I had to post it because I laughed so hard I cried when I read it. Even if you've never met them it's a great story!

My Shoes and I

Today a girl at work commented on my shoes and how she has loved all of them I've worn. Then she asked me if I am a shoe person. I am definitely a shoe person. I don't have a whole lot, and they aren't that nice, but I love them. In high school I had over 20 pairs of shoes. I think I got my love of shoes from my dad because he was always buying new shoes when I was growing up. Most of my shoes are from Payless because at this point in life I like to buy shoes but don't have the money to buy expensive ones. If I have a bad day I can go shoe shopping and feel so much better! And, unlike clothes, shoes always fit! I have more but these are my favorite.

      

Top ten things that have happened lately

1. I threw a baby shower for my good friend Chelsey. It was a fun shower. I should say reunion because most of the people were in our ward and now most of us have moved away. Out of the 15 people there 13 of them have kids, and there were at least 8 babies there. Chelsey is due November 7th and I keep hoping he'll be 3 days early and come November 4th. 

2. Ja has started making mini movies for his accounting honors society, BAP. You can check them out on our Web Gallery (the link is on the right side of the blog). He's very creative and everyone loves them. He'll be making a few more soon. The next ones are going to be modeled after the Ali G videos, and the Mac vs. PC commercials.

3. Grandma has been telling us so many stories from her life. Tonight we found out she used to live on an Indian Reservation for a little while. Her and her mom were afraid of the Indians and didn't like being near them. One day Grandma went to the store and there were Indians inside. The Indians knew she was afraid of them so they locked her in a room. She was screaming her head off until her brother came to save her.

4. I'm still working at Costume Craze. It's getting really crazy since October started today. It's not a horrible job yet, most people are still pretty nice and reasonable on the phone. But there are still those crazy maniacs who yell and swear at you.

5. Ja got a calling in the ward, he now plays the piano in Elder's Quorum. He thought he was asked to only play once, then they called him to the calling in Elder's Quorum. He's glad he has an extra week to practice his hymns this week. 

6. The other day Ja was walking home from school and caught Grandma watering the plants outside. He asked her what she was doing, then she dropped the hose and pretended she wasn't doing anything. 

7. I planned a visit back home in November. I somehow had enough points on Southwest to get a free flight, but it had to be used by December 3rd. Since my job is over October 31st I planned a trip after. I'm really excited to go home!

8. Ja has been home so much lately! It's the greatest thing. We actually had time to watch a movie Monday night. This semester is so much more fun than last semester. 

9. Ja has 2 more interviews for a new position he wants at PwC. It's for the People and Change division and he would be doing more advisory than auditing. The first one went well, and the man told him they are trying to hire more BYU students on their team. If he gets this job we wouldn't be moving to Virginia until June, so CA here we come!

10. Last week we enjoyed some free dinners thanks to the PwC. Wednesday we had dinner at the Marriott hotel. It was one of their recruiting dinners and Ja and I felt so great that he was wearing a PwC name tag instead of just a BYU name tag. Thursday a partner from the Washington D.C. office took all the summer interns to Tucano's for dinner. That place is a nice expensive place with really good food so it's nice when someone else pays for it.

And that's it for now! 

It's been awhile

Some of you may be worried about us since we haven't posted anything in awhile. Don't worry anymore, we are doing great. I think Ja has already been home more this semester than all of last year combined. Even though he has 8 more credits this semester than last, the classes are much less involved. I enjoy it very much because now we can have dinner together every night and I don't have to go to bed alone. We have started a work-out routine together as well. We go to BYU to swim Monday and Wednesday nights and we are really liking it. If you want to start swimming make sure and get good goggles, they are very worth it. Speaking of swimming, the life guards had this cartoon on their door and I thought it was pretty funny. 

 I guess he has been fast his whole life. 

We've also had fun trying to use all of the tomatoes and peaches we have. I don't really like tomatoes so it's been difficult to eat them. But we've managed. We have salads often, give some away, and make salsa. The peaches are much easier to eat. They are sooo good. We will be making homemade peach ice cream tomorrow and we've had peaches at dinner quite often. There is no beating home grown fruit and vegetables. The grocery store can't even compare. Grandma Winder has inspired me to do many things and having a garden and some fruit trees is one of them. 

I have really enjoyed not having homework to do. I get home from work at either 5 or 5:30, start on dinner right away, eat, then clean up. I would hate so have to start on homework after all of that. Instead I've been scrapbooking and having fun doing whatever I like. I have videos to share since I have some time on my hands. I think they are genius. You can check them out here on youtube. Until next time, Go Cougars!!

I'm working again

After 4 1/2 months of unemployment I am finally working again. Kelly Services actually called me with work that I wouldn't mind doing. I'll be doing customer service for an online company called Costume Craze. They sell all sorts of costumes and, of course, Halloween is their busy time. So 4 of us were hired to help with all the calls that customer's have about shipping, sizing, etc. It's not that great of a job, but it's full-time and even if it's horrible at least it's only until Halloween. Today was my first day of training and listening to real calls. It's funny how costumes attract a certain personality type, a little weird type. You can just imagine who is really buying the sexy school girl outfits, and no it's not Britney Spears. I bet I'll have some good laughs with this job. They do have 1000's of costumes of all types so if you need any, you know who to call. They ship all over the world in case you need it. 

For those of you who didn't know...

Ja was offered a job at PwC in the Washington Metro area. We were really excited to get the offer and look forward to going back to Virginia!

The Drive from Virginia to Utah

On August 25th we started our drive back to Utah. Our drive was much shorter home than on our way out to VA. We were told that we should eat at Cracker Barrel on our trip, so we did, everyday. We went once, had a great meal then said we would continue to eat at Cracker Barrel until we had a bad meal. We were still eating there on the last day. It's a great thing those restaurants are all over the country. Check here to see where the closest location is to you!

 Our first sight seeing stop was at Adam-ondi-Aham in Missouri. This is the view from there. 

From there we drove to Far West, MO and saw the temple site there. The 4 corner stones were laid but that was all. Each corner stone was laid in representation of either the lesser priesthood, the higher priesthood, the First Presidency, and the High Council. Here is a picture of the temple site and one corner stone. 

On our way down to Independence, MO we stopped at Haun's Mill and David Whitmer's grave site, and Liberty Jail. Liberty Jail was very humbling because you can see the horrible place Joseph Smith and others had to live. The men couldn't stand up straight because the ceiling was so low. It was cold and dark, and the men were given contaminated food to eat. We didn't take any pictures but you can see one here.

In Independence we visited the Visitor's Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We also visited the site of the future Independence, Missouri temple. 

Our next fun stop was in Amarillo, Texas. We didn't know it would be fun until we went out to dinner at a Texas steak house. We couldn't help ourselves and had to take a picture of the outside. 

Inside there were all sorts of stuffed animal heads, steer horns, and lots of cowboy hats. All the waiters and waitresses wore cowboy gear. There were 3 old men walking from table to table singing and playing the guitar, fiddle, and stand-up bass. It was so funny. We loved eating there. Oh, and the food was pretty good too.  

Our next scheduled fun stop was the Grand Canyon. We were both blown away by the natural beauty of the canyon. We had just been touring beautiful man-made buildings in Europe, so it was amazing to see something so beautiful God created. We loved the warm clean air, the lack of any noise, and the smell of dirt and pine trees. We drove in right before sunset and took some great pictures.

The next morning we got up early and toured more of the South Rim. We saw what we could then decided to go back to the Grand Canyon when we would hike down to the bottom and raft down the river.

We drove through Page, Arizona and Ja just had to touch Lake Powell, the lake of his childhood. So we stopped in for lunch and Ja got in the water. 

From  there it was onward to Provo! We were getting so anxious to get to our final destination and to stop driving! We made it into Provo with no harm or accident for the whole summer. With all the driving and flying we did, we are really lucky. We are excited to spend the next 4 months in Provo until we are off again!