So much to be thankful for!

Lately I have been having this overwhelming feeling of gratitude. Not just because the semester is FINALLY over (which I am grateful for!), but for many other reasons. I have felt so much love from my Heavenly Father. I know that he loves me and that he is aware of my struggles. I have also seen how he looks after his children. I have seen many people in my life blessed in so many ways. And during this Holiday, seeing the church and the community reach out to each other in service and having a giving spirit has been a true testimony builder. I am so grateful for everything that I have. I am grateful that Malone and I are able to hold jobs and pay our bills and live in a nice warm apartment. I am grateful that we can afford to fill our fridge and cupboards with food. I am grateful that we have cars that get us where we need to go. I am grateful for our families and the love they have for us. I am so grateful that Malone and I have been able to attend school and get an education ( no matter how hard it is sometimes!). I am thankful to be a member of the church. I am grateful for the good health Malone and I have. There are just so many things to be grateful for. My heart is so full! I love the Christmas Season!!

school, snow, sick

These are the 3 S words I don't like to hear, yet seems to be quite the common theme this month. School has in fact started and it's been about 4 weeks now. So far it's been very busy for Malone and I both. We don't see each other as much anymore since we both work alot and have tons of homework. Malone is taking chemistry, calculus, technical drawing, and weightlifting this semester. I am taking media experimentation, creative perspective, art seminar, church history, art history, and intro to computer art. We're both going full time and working, which can be quite a hassle. My schedule goes as follows:

Monday: wake up at 6, get ready for school by 7:20, get to class by 8, class from 8 to 1:45 (no break), then hurry home, eat lunch and change for work, try to get to work by 2:30 (which isn't easy), work till around 5-6:30, get home, change, make dinner from 7-8, then I have a little time for homework from about 8- 10 or 11 before I pass out from exhaustion.
Tuesday: wake up at 6, get ready for work by 7:20, get to work by about 7:45, work from 8 to 12 or 1, go home, eat lunch, get ready for class and maybe get in some homework by 2:30, go to class from 3-4 or so, have a little break and go to class from 5-7, get home, make dinner by 8, have a couple hours of homework from 8-10 or 11 before I pass out from exhaustion.
Wednesday: see Monday.... (and sometimes I get to see Malone cuz he doesnt work Wednesdays)
Thursday: See Tuesday... except I don't have class from 5-7, I sometimes have art seminar from 6-7:30 though. Make dinner, and then do homework until I pass out around 10 or 11. (Sometimes if I'm lucky, I get to spend more than 15 minutes with malone and sometimes even a date cuz malone doesn't work on Thursdays either)
Friday: Wake up around 7, make breakfast for Malone, get ready, do homework till about 11, go to work till about 5:30 or 6, come home, make dinner, do homework till I pass out around 10 or 11.
Saturday: Wake up around 7, do homework all day. (sometimes I see Malone on Saturdays too...)
Sunday: Sleep in as late as I want, go to church, and sometimes go to parent's house for dinner... spend LOTS of time with malone and NO HOMEWORK. (I love sunday).....

The END

Oh and then top all that with some snow and a cold and you've got my awesome week. The life of a student. These are the good days.

Great way to end the summer!

The last few weeks have been alot of fun!! First, Malone and I got to go to the Snedaker Family reunion, which was lots of fun. I just wish we could have stayed the whole time! But it was way fun seeing family and enjoying all the traditional activities. I think Malone had a good time too!

Then a few days later it was my 23rd birthday! It was interesting because Malone convinced me that he had to work the night of my birthday. I tried really hard to not let it bother me, but it really did! So the whole day I was at work feeling depressed because as far as I knew, not only was Malone not going to be around but my family hadn't made plans for me either. I was so sad!! But Malone completely made it up that night because he had planned out a surprise birthday party for me! He got my coworkers to blindfold me and bind my hands and Malone kidnapped me and took me to Freeman Park in Idaho Falls where all our friends met up with us for a picnic! My good friend Emily made me a beautiful delicious cake! We all sat and talked and afterwards, Malone had made plans to take me to Destinations Inn for my birthday/anniversary. We got married on the 23rd of august last year so we celebrated my birthday and anniversary in the same week lol. Anyway, that Sunday we celebrated my birthday again only with my family! It was a great week and I loved every bit of it. I can't wait till next year!

My mom gave us a free ticket to Bar J Wranglers in Jackson for our anniversary. So the coming week Malone and I went!! And it was so fun! I wish that we had a big group with us, but having just the two of us was fun. The Wranglers were hilarious! And they are extremely talented! I managed to catch a few pictures too.

School is coming up. Day after tomorrow. I can't belive my huge long vacation is over and I am going back to school. I only have one semester left after this one... I think. Then what?? Who knows! But this semester should prove interesting since Malone and I are both in school. We'll see how it goes!

OH one more thing, for our anniversary, we also managed to get a good deal on a new... MATTRESS! We were so excited! It's so nice to have a comfortable mattress. We love it!

We've Moved!

It's official, we have moved! We didn't move far though, just down the street. Malone and I found a new apartment that's about 100 sq feet bigger, still a one bedroom, for about the same price as we were paying. It's a brand new apartment just finished! Since we are the first to move into this apartment we got a choice of 4 colors to paint one wall of our apartment. We chose a nice tan color, and we really like it! It makes our apartment feel more like a home. So far we've only had a few minor problems with the apartment, and the management has been extremely helpful. We'd call them and within an hour or so they'll come right over and take care of it. The biggest problem we've had so far is ANTS. They've been taking over our apartment since we've moved in. They get on the counter tops into our food, in our laundry, and on us! They're everywhere! The guy came and sprayed a few days ago and the problem is finally going away. In the meantime, I actually started vacuuming up the little buggers with our vacuum just to get rid of them! Some of the features we extremely enjoy about our new place is our 9 foot ceilings, which makes the place feel bigger, our ceiling fan in the living room (way nice to have during this hot summer!), no highway outside our window, and of course all the space. We have a place for our dinner table now as well as a real coat closet (which we didn't have before). It's sweet. I'm going to take some pictures of it and post them on here, so stay tuned! The office here also has a hot tub, which will definately come in handy! So far our apartment has also been really cool, not hot at all. And really quiet, and quite dark at night. We love it! I'm happy because now we have enough room in our apartment to invite friends over for dinner and stuff. Our previous apartment was just uncomfortably small.

We're in a new ward now, and my first impression of it is a good one. I think the ward is really friendly and I felt pretty comfortable right away! They have a fun float trip planned for this weekend down the dry bed in Rigby, but Malone and I can't go unfortunately. Hopefully there will be more opportunities later on.

Malone and I are looking forward to the coming week!! This weekend is the Snedaker Family Reunion which will be HUGE. It's at West Piney, where it is an old tradition of ours to spend our reunion. Plenty of room for the whole Snedaker clan. After this weekend is my birthday, and then our anniversary on the 23rd. It'll be quite a blast! I can't believe it's almost been a year since we've been married. It's been the most wonderful, amazing, most educational year of my life. And I hope that our future life together will be even more amazing. Stay tuned for an update on our awesome week!

A sneak peak into my work

Ever since I was a kid I have loved to draw and write books. I have boxes and boxes full of little drawings I've done over the years. I just doodled for fun for myself and didn't really show much of my stuff. No one really knew how much I loved to draw throughout high school. Now that I'm in college, whenever I tell people I am an art major, they always get excited and want to see what I do... well I have always been extremely shy about showing anything to anyone probably because I don't think it's "perfect". Well, I'm a way off from perfect, but after looking through my sketchbook today, I realized that in fact the more I "doodle" and practice putting ideas on paper, the better I become. I noticed alot of my artwork getting a little better as I went through the sketchbook. That's the cool thing about sketchbooks is youcan go back and see the progression after time. SO, today I finally decided to post a few sketches I've done. I haven't completed most of them, they're just rough ideas, but I actually got excited about a few of these characters and I hope to someday create a really good idea for childrens books with some of these characters. Eventually, with the help and idea of my brother Marshall, I may just create a blog just for my work and maybe get people to see it....maybe. In the mean time, it's mostly just a hobby. Here are a few of my favorite characters from my sketchbook.

This was my idea for a character for a project last semester. I had to include him because I thought he was so cute! Maybe I'll use him for some kind of Easter themed book or something. He needs a name though... ideas?

Meet Jo. I created him during my religion class last semester. He was inspired by a patient I met at work who dressed quite similar to him and had a cane. When I saw this man, I just HAD to create a character out of him!! The name is acutally the name of our intern... I might change it but we'll see. I thought about maybe doing some kind of comic strip out of this one, or maybe a book...






This is Lep! He is a leprachaun! I was just fooling around with this one... he'd make for a clever window painting for St. Patrick's day.









I don't really have an explanation for this one... but he's kindof funny. I was thinking of creating a character that expressed how he was feeling just with his eyes. Eyes are in truth the windows to the soul. He actually somewhat led to another character design I'll show later named Grimm.









This is RALLY!! He is one of the characters I got excited about because I think he'd make for a fun book. I named him after another patient I met at work named Ralston, we called him Rally. I thought it'd make for a cute name for this dog. And it sort of sounds like RILEY which is the name of my adorable dog whom I love. Anyway, I think he'd make for a fun book... it's just coming up with a story line that's the hard part!




This is the lovely Cleo. This summer I have been trying to work on my head drawing skills. Honestly I have always hated drawing people because we've all looked at millions of people and we know how they are supposed to look. And I have struggled with making them look right. So, I always did cartoons of people that look silly on purpose. I have been trying to force myself to combine the two. Realistic with cartoon. I'm still working on it, but I got excited when this little lady came along. She's kindof inspired by the character Beyonce plays on Austin Powers. Cleo is short for Cleopatra. And I named her this because she's a diva, like Beyonce! We'll see where this goes. I doubt it'll go into a book but perhaps some kind of ad or something would be fun.


This little guy doesn't have a name, but I created him for my Dad actually. My dad has alot of funny ideas for a kind of comic strip you might say. One of which is a list of "You might be an donkey if..." lol! I loved some of his ideas, so I made this fella. We'll see where this one goes too. I've always wanted to illustrate my dad's jokes. He's got some good ones.










This is Victor, and I have no idea what I'd do with him. He could make for some kind of villain. Personally, I think he looks like a gay hairdresser. Haaaay!









This is Vanessa. She's yet another practice head drawing person, but she

turned out cute. Again, I don't really know what I'd do with her but I like her!




Meet Little Willy! He's a character I liked for a book. There's a little room for improvement, but if I could think of a good start to a story I'd love to use him!

So all of the above pictures are of one character named Grimm. He is the most recent development and I am really excited about him! I definately want to create a story out of him . There's still alot to do, but I want to make a story out of him. Grimm is a Grizzle who lives in the jungle. He will eventually have a friend/sidekick named Grover, but I haven't found a character I like yet. Anyway, I really think I might be onto something with this one. I also think I might end up doing like some kind of book of limricks with this. Either all one story or a few short ones in limrick. That'd be cool!

This last one is a little dedication to my little brother Parker!! I did a little doodle of him the other day and I think it turned out kinda cute! Maybe I'll do a book about Parker too. haha!

That's about all I have for now. I hope it wasn't too much!! I think I might start to turn my sights towards finishing some of these characters instead of creating more. I never finish anything I start so I hope that I actually do this time. I hope you enjoyed these! Give me your comments!

Loving Summer!

Malone and I have had an awesome summer so far! We've been keeping quite busy, especially on the weekends. I found a few pictures to kind of help highlight some of our adventures.

Taking a step back, these were just a couple pictures from Deidra's bridal shower in Rigby. She had a hawaiian theme, and it turned out pretty good! She got lots of gifts and I think everyone had a good time. I could tell Deej had fun, and that's the most important! I don't really have any pictures of the wedding, so I stole some of Deidra's off of facebook so I could share! Thanks Deej!

Yes, this is a pot of gravy, but not just any gravy. I MADE it from scratch! And it was good! This is the first successful batch of gravy I have ever created. I just had to include this, for those who know me, this is amazing. Moving on...




Malone and I went with my family down to the Manti Pageant on June 27th. I forgot just how beautiful the temple was there! We loved the pageant and spending time with the family. I am pretty sure the grandkids were confused as to what was going on in the pageant, but it was fun to see them get excited.

Malone was pretty excited too!



Me and Malone saving seats...


Parker's such a cool dude and an awesome uncle, he kept trying to keep Claire and Chandler under control... which is hard to do when they're together!
I love this picture of Jacob, he's soo cute!



We were invited by our good friends Jared and Emily to go camping/rafting with them and their family on the Hoeback 4th of July weekend. We had a blast! And I wish I had more pictures, but my friends promised they'd get more pictures to me. But for the mean time, here is a view of the scenery from our tent.




Here's the view inside our tent... Oops! (That'd be Malone)





And this is the view of...what happens when you don't use sunscreen on the river. Malone got some pretty interesting patterns from his life jacket haha. Poor kid. I got a little burned on the spots I missed with sunscreen, but I didn't burn nearly as bad! Anyway, the river was a blast. Lunch counter, the big "climax" was sooo scary, but way exciting. We had alot of fun spending time with Emily's family, they're really fun and super nice to let us tag along. We left home Thursday morning, July 2 and came home on the 3rd. The weather was perfect! A little chilly in the morning, but plenty warm in the afternoon (as you can see from Malone's lovely shade!) That night it rained like crazy and there was lightening and thunder. Our friends Kishel and David decided to bunk with us in our huge tent b/c they were afraid of getting soaked in their little one. Malone and I were able to do about 3 runs down the rapids, and 2 down the calm parts. We loved it!

I didn't get any pictures from 4th of July really... that kind of stinks. So I borrowed some from Malone's sister Heidi... hopefully she doesn't mind! But Malone and I had a good day. He had to work first thing that morning at Broulims, and I went to the Rexburg Parade with my mom and Parker. While looking for a place to sit, we stumbled across my dad's brother's family, Karl and Tiffany, so we sat by them and chatted. Afterwards, I went home and waited for Malone to come home so we could head over to his parents house. They were having a little family reunion. Pretty much all of Malone's brothers and sisters were there as well as neices and nephews. It was fun to see everyone and see how the kids have grown. We had dinner and visited, took family pictures, and then Malone, Malone's nephew, and I all went to see fireworks in Idaho Falls. We borrowed his brother's dog Koda and took him along with us. It was fun having a dog again, even though it was temporary. Koda didn't like the firworks, but the rest of us did! We had a really good seat and it was perfect!

Everyone gave us a hard time about not having kids, so we had Malone's brothers dog and his sister's dog as our children! This is Koda and Red. Adorable dogs! I would have loved to take them home with me!

The other day I decided to make a change! Finally! SO I dyed my hair! Here's a before shot...

here's after... but it's probably not the best picture. Oh well!

Last weekend I had the lovely opportunity to go to my cousin's weddings. Daniel's was on Friday and Aubrey's was on Saturday. Ashley and I arrived Friday night about half an hour before Daniel's reception ended. It was then that we found out that most of our cousins had gone back home because they were all sick and throwing up! Over the weekend, this crazy bug spread to more cousins. Eventually Aubrey and her hubby got sick on their wedding day. I felt so bad for them! But somehow I lucked out because I never got sick. Even though everyone got sick, we still were able to visit and have some fun. I won't be making it to the reunion this weekend, so sorry family! I love you all!

One last thing, I wanted to let everyone know that Malone and I are moving! We've lived in this tiny apartment for a year and are ready to move into a little bit bigger apartment. We're moving July 31! So we've got to get packing! Luckily we're just moving down the street, but we're excited. Our friends Kishele and David are planning on moving the same day to the same place as well, so at least we'll know one couple in our new ward! I wish one other friend, you know who you are, would move over there too! We'll just have to see though!

That's all I've got so far... but no worries, we still have more adventures to come this summer! And hopefully I have my camera!

Crazy Weekend

This week has been crazy! About a week ago, Malone had an accident in his mechanical lab at school. I'm not sure if I completely understand how it happened, but he was working with a metal lathe and as he went to turn off the machine, something broke and a piece of metal flew and hit Malone right in the face! He got away with a fractured nose and a good two inch gash under his right eye. He had to go into the emergency room on campus and get sewed up. Luckily he was wearing safety goggles! We're pretty sure that those saved his eye. Thank goodness! Malone has been really sore all week and his nose is really tender. He had alot of bruising around his eye, nose, and cheek and was very swollen the first few days. Malone got the stitches out yesterday and he is looking so much better! He's been healing quickly and we don't think the scar will be too bad. The pictures don't really do justice, but you get the idea. We're a little frustrated with the school because we ended up getting a bill for $200 from the health center. They aren't taking any responsibility or liability. So we're fighting it hoping that either our insurance or the school will help us out here.










as of today, this is how he looks--not too shabby eh?

The same weekend Malone had his little accident, I had the opportunity to go to my best friend Deidra's wedding! It was so much fun! I didn't really get to snap any pictures... Don't know what I was thinking! But it was Saturday the 20th at the Historic Shelton in Idaho Falls. It was a nice ceremony and the reception/party afterwards was lots of fun! Malone reluctantly came with me, despite his sore face, and I think he enjoyed it too.