Birthday Week

Last Wednesday was my birthday! To start the celebrations Brad made Texas French Toast with strawberries and blue berries, with two sides of sausage and eggs. Yum! Then we opened presents. Brad got me bubbe sticks, a New York skyline puzzle, apples to apples, and some office supplies! I got everything I'd ever hoped for from both sides of the family as well. Thank you so much!

Playing with the bubbles!! I know it's kind of immature, but it was a lot of fun and will be all summer. We opened the puzzle and began to work on it ASAP! After 24 hours we had this much done.

We became OCD about it at times. We both just got so into working on our area and didn't want to stop until we had finished a building, or water part. So we just ended staying up later and later and procrastinated doing anyting longer and longer, haha. But all we have left is the sky, so the end is near! When it's my birthday I not only celebrate the day, but I turn the whole week into my birthday week. Just gives me more excuses to go out or eat more cake really. So to finish my birthday week; on Sunday we went on a drive to Lake Atalanta.

Cute Turtles!! I love how there are turtles everywhere in Arkansas!! :)

Simply beautiful. It was a nice Sunday walk and a great end to a great week! Thanks to everyone who helped make my day wonderful! :)

Can't get any better than him

Bradley has been the most wonderful husband ever!! First mother's day came, and he came home from work with some gorgeous flowers! Even though I'm not a mom yet, he just figured that one day I would be, so this was good practice!

We got to watch one of the Lillies slowly open over 2 days! Flowers are amazing. Then just last week we celebrated our 2 months. I came home form my chiropractor appointment and he had made breakfast! :)

How adorable!! :) The whip cream was super fluffy but kind of died by the time we got the picture. Brad has also been willing to go to all these places I want to explore. We went out to Susie Q's on Saturday. A malt/burger place, which was pretty good.It's a little building you drive up to, and order at a window. It seemed kind of sketch and run down, but seemed like it would be a real genuine kind of burger place; which it was.

The past few nights it's been warm enough outside that the fireflies come out in the fields. We'll go stand by the field and watch for them, they light up real fast then die, light up then die. So it's always tricking watching them cause they just pop out everywhere. So one night as we were walking to our apartment one flew in front of us. Of course I got excited and Brad started following it until he caught it! :) We brought him inside and put him in some tupperware.

We tried turning out the lights to see him, but he would only light up if we shook the tupperware a little. After we had our fun we released him back outside. Then this morning Brad got up early with me and went to the Botanical Gardens. They had about 7-8 different styled gardens we were able to explore. The Children's Garden was our favorite, they had lots of bridges, fake trees to climb in, and neat plants decorating it.

Those were all in the Children's Garden. We also had fun with random sculpted things they had around each garden.

Brad almost flew away on his Nimbus 5000! We also saw beautiful flowers, a giant bee, and a bunny. :) I'm so glad Brad has been such a trooper and come exploring with me, caught a firefly, and just always shows his love for me! He's the best man I could ever ask for! :) Plus he is always willing to take ridiculous pictures with me! :)

On Sunday we received our calling to be one of the new sunbeam teachers, which we are so jazzed about! I also just got a job at quizno's, sadly I'm only doing training from 11-2 this week so I come home and still have the whole day to be by myself. At least I'm earning some money, and the hours will pick up next week.

Oh the Places we Go!

A week ago my mom came to visit! :) She brought bearing many gifts, since my birthday is coming up! One gift being a bike! Which helps me out so much, I now have a mode of transportation! I've done many trips and think I will now invest my time into going to Walmart to play Wii and X-box 360 with the locals! :) haha. jk, but I'm almost that desperate!

While she was here we went on MANY adventures! First we went to Main street Rogers; which was not what we thought it would be... Online it looked like a cute old town shopping place. When we got there only about half the stores were open since it was raining and so many had gone out of business. The next day we decided to head down south to the farmer's market and Devil Den state park. Here are some pictures of Rogers and at the Market:

Snapdragon's are now one of my favorite flowers!! They looked so beautiful with the lillies! We also saw this giant elephant made out of recycled tires, it had traveled all the way from South Africa to Arkansas! The last picture is us in the market drinking out white hot chocolate which was divine!

As we left for Devil's Den we saw an abandoned house on the side of the road. We had been talking about how there are so many abandoned little houses every where we drive and how we always want to stop and explore them. So we pulled over and got out to explore! Inside the house there was some knocked down stuff, spiders, and garbage all around. Not as thrilling as a Crime scene like I secretly hoped, but still great. The drive out to Devil's Den was beautiful with lots of curvy roads and trees. As we were driving over a hill we saw a turtle in the other lane! We couldn't leave the little guy there to be hit so we made a u- turn and saved him!

Looked like the turtle had already been ran over a few times... at least we prevented one more! We went on a hike at Devil's Den which included caves, waterfalls, and lots of green. Shown below:

There were some deep crevices we were able to climb down, at least I did, mom went about half way. We also had some memorable moments on a bridge in front of one of the waterfalls.

Twas a good time at Devil's Den, I can't wait to go back and explore with Bradley! :) We also enjoyed some amazing Korean food! It felt like we were back in Korea eating the food there. As well as Zaxby's, a chicken place down in the south. Delicious!

The next day our adventures took us out to War Eagle Mill, and Eureka Springs. My camera battery died so we only have a few pictures taken with my phone. The Mill was really interesting and had a lot of home made grains and some AMAZING pee-can cobbler!! Ah, we were in Heaven! Eureka was one of the cutest towns we've been to here in the US. It reminded us of a little European town; super tiny steep roads, cute houses, and lots of little shops! We walked through the crescent hotel which is supposedly "haunted." From the top balcony of the hotel we looked out and saw hills of trees and this big white statue of Christ. It's called Christ of the Ozarks and he was just popping out above all the trees; so we had to drive over and see it! This is what we saw when we got there!

7 stories tall and his arm width is 60 feet! Eureka springs became a city becuase it has so many random natural springs. So we stopped at one called magnetic springs. The myth was that if you drank from it somehow your insides would become magnetized and cure you of all your diseases and illness! So we filled up a water bottle and drank! Here's my mom at the spring with a pretty butterfly:

After that we felt great and that we could take on anything; like Lions and Tigers, so we went and found some!You can't really see it but there is a lion and a Tiger up there! As we were driving out of the city we turned up this side street to see if we could see the Christ of the Ozarks, but when we got to the top of the hill there were all these cages of Lions, and Tigers, and Bears! Oh my! As well as a cougar, jaguar, black panther, lynx, and we saw a deer!
We had a great time, Brad and I are so grateful my mom was able to come and visit us in our new home! Since Mother's day is tomorrow I just want to give a little shout out: thanks for all your help, and everything you've taught me; like cooking and scrapbooking, and driving! :) haha I Love you! You really have taught me a lot even if you don't know it! I'm so glad we've been able to spend 70+ hours in the car together on all our trips the past few months! :) We are also grateful for Brad's mom and all her love and support as we are away. Miss you both lots and look forward to seeing you again soon!

Love, Jessi and Brad

Spider Update

Last night made 14 spiders in our apartment and we've killed 13 of them. Yesterday was the most tragic day of spiders inside yet. The first spider of the day I saw while in the kitchen. It was in the middle of the floor, it saw me, then scurried back under the dishwasher! I got the Hot Shot spider killer my mom got me and sprayed around the whole area, but haven't seen it again. Great! That's one spider that got away. It looked something like this

The worst part came last night after my shower. I had just combed my hair and was removing all excess hair that was falling out because I typically have a good bunch. I usually feel hair tickle my arms as I do this so I just ignore it until I remove the hair. Well, I felt a tickle on my left arm so I non chalantly turned to remove the hair when I saw a SPIDER on me!!! I screamed and whacked it off and ran around the apartment until I landed on the bed and proceeded to roll. Due to my blood curling scream Brad came in to see what was wrong thinking that the world was ending. I jumped on him because I was too afraid to touch anything else. He went into the bathroom to see if he could spot any spider or spider guts. Sadly there were none... Brad continued searching as I just sat on the bed. In his search he shut the door and there I saw it! A spider on the back of the door, I screamed again and told Brad to kill it so he came in and got it. Then when I felt brave enough to look in the bathroom for any sign of a spider we saw ANOTHER one on the wall of the bathroom!!! That's a possiblity of three spiders just in our bathroom! After that Brad scoped the whole apartment for any other spiders that could be looming. I'm now paranoid of any tickle I feel! This is what the spiders looked like:

Yes, even though this is a daddy long leg, they are still SCARY!! Espcially when seen on you! We seem to have had an invasion of daddy long legs last night, but hopefully they've all run away.