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-Ryan and Patricia

Master x 2 = One Happy Family

So, it has been a while since we sent a little love note to the fam. Well, here it is. We love you!

We have been working hard to make our home a little more "homey". However, we are quickly learning that it is going to have to come a little at a time. We just don't have the energy or the money to do it all at once. But, we just completed one of the biggest projects on our list. A garage door opener.

We realize that one of the joys of owning a home is not having to scrape the ice from your windows in the morning. Living in Idaho, we are thankful for our little one car garage. It is quite perfect for us. It just needed a garage door opener. That is where Ryan the Builder comes in (Yes he can!!). He can do anything. Seriously, I would have just paid the $160 fee for installation. Putting in a garage door opener sounds a little intimidating. On the other hand, I am proud to say that he accomplished his task and we now can open our garage without removing a screwdriver from the track first. But, perhaps we should have just paid the installation fee. It may have been cheaper. Lets just say that Ryan had a mishap with the bolt he was trying to tighten. Halfway through the project we ended up at the doctors office where Ryan received four wonderful stitches.


But he came home, finished the project and is happy as a camper to be able to park his car in the garage. Yeah!

Now, I am sure all of you are waiting in anticipation. I would like to proudly announce that we are now (Master)^2 (that is master squared for all you non geeks!) Ryan successfully passed his thesis defense today! Despite being sick and having a sewed up finger he went in and showed his professors who is boss. AND he did it all with his zipper down. Yup, he went through his entire presentation showing a little bit of xyz. Don't worry, the lights were dimmed for his powerpoint presentation and he was wearing a suit jacket. All the same, I feel I can publicly laugh at him! Ha! On a more serious note, I am super proud of him. I am amazed at what he has accomplished. He is the smartest man I know and I love him so much. We are happy to finally be finished with such a large task. We have had so many blessings from above and couldn't have done it without all of your support and the blessings of a loving Father in Heaven.

Thanks for everything. We love you all

Patricia

Here's Your Two Cents

We received a refund check in the mail. We have been getting a lot of those little checks. Moving does have it's perks. We have been refunded for Comcast cable payments, insurance payments, etc. Yesterdays refund was from the Title Company where we closed our house. Apparently we overpaid . . .

I can't believe they actually wrote out a check for 2 cents! It cost them more to mail the check than the check is even worth! I'm don't know if we'll cash this baby.

Ryan and Patricia

The Latest and Greatest

So, I thought it was time I updated everyone on the latest and greatest of the Davis household. Enjoy!

We finally closed on our home here in Idaho Falls. Wahoo! Just so you get a picture of what we are getting ourselves into, here is a picture of the house before any love. . .

Since this was taken we have faithfully watered the lawn, trimmed bushes, and cleaned everything. It has taken a lot of work, and will continue to need more work, but we are having fun. It is exciting to own our own home, and the work seems more like an investment than a terrible task.

For those of you who don't know anything of the closing process we went through, I'll fill you in. We bought the home on a short sale, meaning that the seller was trying to dump the house before it was foreclosed on. Thus, we got a great deal. However, we ran into a few road blocks along the way. Most notably, new lending rules for mortgages required that we have thirty days of pay stubs. Because we didn't live in Idaho Falls, nor work in Idaho Falls, we did not have any pay stubs. The bad news was that we had already put in an offer on the house by the time we found out about the new rules and were in the middle of house buying proceedings. So, we had to extend our closing date, move into the house, rent it, and hope that everything would work out so we would not have to move again. Stressful! But everything worked out beautifully. We were able to close two days ago and are now the official owners of the home. It is good we closed when we did too. We received a note on our door yesterday (it was for the previous owner) notifying us that the house was to be foreclosed on and sold in an auction in January. Apparently not everything from the sale had been recorded yet and so certain parties were not notified of the sale. Just so you know, everything is good. It did make us realize how close we were to not closing on the house at all. Hmmm. . .

Our first official act of making the house our own started with our shower. The shower head was super short and Ryan kept hitting his head. Even at 5'6" I had to scrunch my body to fit under the short head. Here is a lovely before:
Don't you love Ryan's sad face. Sorry for the blurry/side picture. And, here is the after!

Again, sorry for the blur picture!

In addition to having a short showerhead, the furnace on the house was shot. So, we have been living with a very cold house the past few days while we were waiting for the furnace men to come and replace the old original furnace (from 1961, wowza!) We have been sleeping with multiple blankets, here is proof! It is a good thing we are getting a new furnace today! No more ice feet!

Lastly, I thought I would add a little bit about what I have been doing the past month. As you know, when we first moved to Idaho Falls I was looking for a job. Most of the jobs here were low paying or quickly filled. Even with a master's degree I was struggling to find something that was good. As I was doing this I was also trying my hand a freelance writing on the internet. I worked my way through college writing my little buns off and so I have been able to transition nicely to writing for myself. A few weeks ago I actually stopped looking for a job because I thought I could make a go at this as a career. However, I haven't wanted to tell everyone because I wanted to make sure it was something I could really do. So this is my official shout out. I am a freelance writer! I have been and will be successful and I am excited. In addition, I really feel like this is what Heavenly Father wants me to do. I love writing and I will be able to continue writing from home if I want even after we have kids. I hope you all are excited too, thank you for being supportive.

We love you all so much. Stay tuned for more updates on the house and our lives.

Love

Ryan and Patricia

Yes Master!

So I thought I would send a quick and happy yippee into the void. I am officially a master of science from USU. We'll it won't be official until I get my diploma. BUT, I did have my thesis defense yesterday, it went awesome, and I passed! Ryan has to wait four more weeks until he can defend his, but he is coming along quickly. I told him he has to call me "master" all week long! If he forgets I'll have to whip him into shape. But not too much because I'm sure he'll make me reciprocate in four weeks.

Anyway, thanks everyone for all of your love and support. We love you all.

Patricia

Goodbye First Apartment, Hello Chuckers!

So, I guess it is time to post again. We have officially moved to Idaho Falls from Logan and have been very, very busy weeding, cleaning, organizing and getting used to Idaho. I thought I would include a picture of our very first/last apartment for old times sake, oh so fun! We won't be posting pictures of our house yet . . . you lucky people will just have to wait. But we did go to a minor league baseball game (it felt like we were at a high school team's game, it was so small!). Idaho Fall's team is called the Chuckers. The mascot is bird, just in case you were wondering. Enjoy the fun pictures! We'll write more soon! Much love!

Food and Fun Cont.

Oops, I wasn't quite finished with the last post when I accidentally uploaded it, so you lucky people get to have two updates instead of one.

I also thought I would show you what our latest food adventures have brought. We decided to try something new, and it was oh so good! Check out this delicious meal . . .
More depressing, however, is the fact that our beloved washer started smoking yesterday. After a brief inspection we tried it again. While it is still working (it is loud, but it did stop smoking), we decided to start saving our pennies for a new one as they are a little expensive and could do some damage to our budget.


We have also been getting ready to move. I must say that I hate moving! Okay, not just hate, I loathe moving! I really do. There is nothing worse than packing up everything you own, loading it onto a truck driving to another state (even if it is just Idaho) and then unloading it from the truck into your house where it will sit and slowly be unpacked over the next year. . . anyway I thought I would challenge you. I bet none of you can fit everything you own into a single room. We are shooting for it so we can clean the upstairs of our apartment before moving day. Check it out.
Anyway, we love you. I also want to thank my lovely brothers and parents in advance to helping us to move next week. We are going to have so much fun! (said sarcastically)

Love
Patricia

Food and fun!

So, I thought I would post a picture of my honey-buns! He entered a research symposium this past semester (yes, I am just getting around to posting this) and won 4th place and a total of $50! Yeah! I am so proud of him, his poster was awesome, and he gave a great presentation on the research he has been doing for his thesis. Feast your eyes on this hunka, hunka burnin love and his handsome poster!

WE ARE BUYING A HOUSE!!

All, thank you for your prayers and infinite support. We just found out this morning that the bank has accepted our short sale offer, and we are buying a house! We are excited and terrified. We'll post pictures later when we have them. For now, just know that the house is awesome and we should be happily settled in Idaho Falls by this time next month.

Love you all

Sasquatch . . .and pictures to prove it!

Recently we had an incident, but you won't believe it. I didn't believe it myself until I saw it for my own eyes. That is why we have pictures to prove it. What am I talking about . ? . Sasquatch. He was in our very apartment. Yes you heard me, the big furry guy that everyone has been trying to prove exists. We'll we've done it.

Man that guy sheds! He just walked through our apartment and look what he left.Upon further inspection we found that all of this hair, was leading to our washer.


I don't know how a guy with such big feet could fit in this . . .
It was about this point that we realized there was something else on the floor . . . what is it? (Scary theme music from the movie Jaws) Duuuuuuu da . . . duuuuu da . . . duuuu da . . . duuu da . . . duu da . . . du da . . .our bathroom rug?
Okay so we actually washed our bathroom rug. We figured it would be okay (even though the tag says not to wash it). I guess after losing massive amounts of precious post shower foot padding, we now believe the tag.

Other than the washer incident we are doing well. We are both super close to being done with our thesis (wahoo!) and are still waiting to hear about the offer we made on a house in Idaho Falls.

Love you all

Ryan and Patricia

YUM!

There is nothing better than food that you have grown yourself. For Valentines day Ryan gave me some herb seed/potting soil/pots. So, we planted them and have been watching them grow this winter/spring. This past week, we were able to eat some of the fruits of our success . . . cilantro!

We ate it like this . . . and it was great! Very spicy!

We also decided that we are going to open a restaurant that features the biggest pancakes around . . .


Oh, baby! Isn't he delicious!

Institute & ABT

It's official! We have finished our finals and Ryan and I have just become ABT or in other words "All BUT Thesis"! As you might have guessed, this means that we have completed every requirement to get our masters degree, except a thesis. That's what this summer is for. We will probably be spending our days and maybe even a few nights, writing.Yeah! We hope to be finished with the writing by July though, so our summer won't be completely spent.



In other news, we both graduated from institute this past weekend. It was a good graduation and now we are institute graduates!

We are excited for summer and are looking forward to seeing everyone!

Relay For Life and More

These are some of the things that we have been doing lately . . .

Donating hair to Locks of Love . . .


After growing my hair for several months it finally was long enough to cut and donate. I had Ryan do it, and it was probably one of the most nerve racking events in his life! I went to the salon afterwards.

All night long Relay for Life, walk for cancer . . .

We stayed up all night, and walked to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Overall, the relay raised almost $10,000 for the cause!

And . . . we've both been sick with strep throat this week. But, after antibiotics and lots of Gatorade we're starting to get better.

We will both be graduating from institute on Saturday, April 25th at 3:00pm. We would love to see you there.

That's a quick recap of the past month or so. Hope you enjoyed it, we love you!

Currrent Events

All, it has been awhile since the last post. I thought I would update you. We are currently on spring break and while we had many plans and aspirations we have not really done anything. But, we have enjoyed just being lazy together. School is going well. We are busy of course, with courses, homework, work, research and our theses. It is our hope to graduate sometime during the summer. We are both planning on graduating from Institute in May so place a little post-it note in the back of your mind, because we'll probably call to tell you the date.

For those of you who don't know, we have decided to stay in Logan while Ryan gets a Ph.D. That being said, we will be here for another three or four years in cold, cold Logan. I am planning to work while Ryan is in school and we are looking into buying a house. Ryan also really, really wants to get a dog. We'll see what happens as far as the dog/house thing goes. We are loving our new callings in church, Ryan is the 11 year old scout leader and I teach the 5 and 6 year olds in primary. We are excited to have new neices and a nephew coming (congrats Debbie, Anona and Jennylyn) and we hope that even though you are far away we will see pictures as soon as possible.

We will try harder to keep you updated with our lives and hope to hear from you too!