You know you've had an exhausting week when you get legitametly excited about bed time after work, on a Friday night.

Today Nate and I scheduled our first dentist appointment with our own group dental insurance. I shouldn't be as excited as I am. But this is a milestone.

London. Europe. My dream vacation. I think about going there at least 3 times a week and i'm not kidding. Today that's only where my thoughts are. London. Paris. Rome. Vienna. Old gorgeous Europe architecture. Accents. Regretting not going to Belgium.

Yet, will I ever go there? It looks like it's not in my cards. At least not until i'm old and decrepit. Please money, fall into our lap and let me fulfill my lifelong dream of traveling overseas. Please.

It's been a while since I've updated this blog, so I figured it was about time.

Nate and I have settled into life here. I got a job at Agio Technology, which is a start up company. They have only been in business in a year and a half, but they are doing really well. I'm not sure I liked it for the first week I worked there, but now that I'm starting to get the swing of things I really really like it. Nate hasn't found a job yet after quitting the job at the nut house for kids. BUT he just got accepted to the full time program! We don't know yet if he will be able to work since he will be doing 15 credit hours plus 20 hours of a practicum, but he's still looking nonetheless.

We experienced a pretty crazy storm here about 2 and a half weeks ago. Apparently winds got up to 90 mph (i'm not exaggerating) and there was tons of rain and hail. So much rain in fact, that water started coming through our windows and front door at a pretty rapid rate. It was a scary 15 minutes. After it was all over we went outside and saw all the damage...which was a lot. Our neighbors (in the duplex next to us) came out screaming a few choice words because his roof caved in. He wasn't the only one our street. We now have 3 abandoned units of townhouses because their roofs were torn off. It was eerie hearing all the sirens and car alarms going off in the background. But it was cool to see the niceness of all the Okies emerge as everyone rushed to help those who had to get things out of their homes because the water destroyed everything.

On a happier note, we have seemed to have made a few friends here which is nice. They are all in our ward and two of the couples live 20 steps away in our circle. We are trying to get the third couple in our neighborhood so it's complete. It would be nice if we could trade them with our super loud next door neighbors. Anywho, on Sunday night we all went to a private lake that my co-worker invited us to for fireworks and picked the perfect secluded spot on the lake where we could see the amazing fireworks perfectly. It was really the perfect night. The lake was perfect and the weather was perfect, which is extremely hard to find here considering it hasn't been less than 100 degree for about a week and a half now. Afterwards we went to ihop (we waited until after midnight of course) and i had the best tasting pancakes I ever had. Of course I think anything tastes good at that time of night.

Today we bought tickets to go out to Utah at the end of August to see my best friend of how many years? 17 minus a 10 year break? get married. I have to bring this up on here because I'd feel so cheesy sending her a text or telling her in person, so here it goes. I know I tell her probably daily how excited I am for her, but I don't think she really knows how happy I am for the experience she is about to have. I already know that when I watch them get married, I will ball my eyes out. I'm so glad she found a great guy and that everything she has been hoping for and wanting is about to come true. Plus, I cannot wait until they come to Oklahoma to visit...which they have to. Oh, and please still be my friend after you get married.


Well I think that's all that's going on in our lives. I really should blog more often so these posts aren't so long...

I know I just posted something yesterday, but on Yahoo! there was this story about this guy who threw himself over his wife to protect her while a tornado ripped through their house and because of that he saved her life, but lost his.

While it's a super sad ending, could this story be anymore sweet?

Alright well I guess it's time for an update about our new adventures in Oklahoma and since I don't really know where to start, I guess I'll just start from Day 1 of arrival. We got into Norman and went straight to meet our landlord at his work where we picked up our key and learned that due to a few unlucky circumstances, we would not be able to move in until the next day. Not exactly what we wanted to hear, but our landlord was extremely nice about it and put us up in a nice hotel. It wasn't until we started driving to look at our place that I noticed how shockingly pretty Norman is. It's so green and my most favorite part, there are so many trees and at a lot of spots the trees hang over the road creating this beautiful canopy. I loved it more than Nate probably because it reminded me of WI.

Anywho, we weren't able to move our stuff in until the day after we arrived, giving us a lot of free time to get some things done we needed to like become residents of OK and go grocery shopping, etc. It was nice to get to drive around the city even though I'm sure we will never get used to the layout...they love one way streets here. So, we got settled in and a few days later experienced our first BIG thunderstorm here. I forgot how much I love/miss real thunderstorms.

Since we both don't have jobs we decided to go walk around the OU campus and get Nate his student ID so he can be official. I LOVE the campus. It's so gorgeous and beats out every other campus. The buildings have amazing architecture and give it this almost medieval feel. I don't know it's hard to explain. But it's gorgeous. While we were on campus we went into the social work building just to look around and boy was timing right because we literally ran into the MSW program coordinator and by the end of talking to her she said she would do everything she could to switch him to the full-time program. We loved hearing that. We also found this awesome duck pond that makes the one at BYU laughable. It's gorgeous and while it doesn't smell the best we had a great time walking around and taking in the green. We also found this great animal shelter that treats their dogs so much better than the humane society and we get to walk the dogs and play with them for as long as we want and it's wonderful and I love it.

It didn't take Nate long to find a job...a great job. He will be doing almost exactly what he wants (which is individual and group counseling with troubled kids ages 5 to 12) all because the director of the treatment center was so impressed with him. He hasn't started yet though because he is waiting to get his background check from UT. I'm very proud of him needless to say.

A few days about we experienced our first tornado threat. When we heard the sirens we decided to go outside and look and as we opened our door we saw all our neighbors hurriedly jump in their cars and leave? They clearly know about a tornado shelter that we do not know about.

I'm sure since this post is so long and pretty uninteresting no one will read it, but I'll post pictures that will basically summarize what I wrote.

Here are what the pictures show.
1. The Welcome to Norman sign as when we first got to the city...we were cleary very excited.
2. Us getting our Oklahoma license plate. We are officially Sooners!
3. Me playing with one of the dogs that we got to walk. I loved this dog. He would walk a few steps and then stop to be petted (is that a word?)
4. The duck pond with part of OU in the background.
5. Our place! we are the one on the left. We <3 our apartment. 6. Last but not least, an OU chair we found while shopping for our couches. No we did not buy it, but Nate loved the chair.

So on May 9th Nate and I will begin a road trip to our new home for 3 years...Norman, OK. I know I keep bringing this up whenever I talk about Oklahoma, but I really think I should write this down, just so that if there is a hard time in Oklahoma I can look back and remember that we are definitely in the RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME.

Ever since Nate applied to grad schools in January, our number one thought is where we should end up. We LOVED the idea of Portland and that was about it. I had anxiety every time I thought about AZ or Denver and the University of Oklahoma we never even thought twice about because why in the world would we want to live there?

Well we got the email that Nate was accepted to OU and I specifically told Amber: "well OU is out" and she said "yea why would anyone move to OK?" and I answered with "yea no joke. we will not be going there"

Two weeks later, we accepted OU's acceptance and ever since then, everything has fallen into place, letting Nate and I know that we are supposed to LIVE IN OKLAHOMA. Here's why:

After getting the acceptance to OU, we started researching the school, town, state, etc. We suddenly met a lot of people who lived in OK and who kept saying how much they loved it. As we mulled it over, we suddenly started getting excited for our future, something that we hadn't felt in a while. Eventually, we just knew that's where we were going. It was no longer a question it was now a fact. A few weeks later we went to the temple with our friends with the question of when we should leave. The next day, we found out Nate's parents house had sold and that they wanted to take possession of the house May 11th. QUESTIONS ANSWERED. Thank you.

So that night we started looking through all different types of websites for apartments. When I thought I had visited every website with apartment rentals, I decided to try one last website. What did I find? A brand new posting for a townhome that was being COMPLETELY REMODELED, was only $625 a month and was only 5 minutes from the school. I emailed the guy and didn't think twice about it. He emailed me the next day and we chatted for a bit, but i just wasn't that interested.

Later that night while I was at work, he sent a response to a previous email I had sent, and for some reason after reading the email, I just had to have this place. I have NO CLUE what changed my mind, but it was definitely changed. Suddenly I wanted this place and only this place and I was willing to do anything to get it. Since I was at work (and it was slow) I was able to respond to him quickly, which after allowed me to claim dibs on the townhome. The potential landlord kept saying though how he didn't want to rent it to us when no one had seen it, so we thought we had hit a roadblock.

BUT WAIT, we remembered that Nate's brother and his wife had friends that had moved to OK about 8 months before, who, coincidently, only liked about 40 minutes away. So she went to check out the place the next day and by Thursday of this week, we had secured it.

People reading this may be think "so what. things worked out. congratulations." To them I say, it's not just that everything worked out, it's that everything worked out SO PERFECTLY with MINIMAL EFFORT. Some may call us silly, but as a result of this, we know beyond a doubt that we are about to be in the RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME and we couldn't be more excited for what's in store.