land that i love...

well hello. this post will be a photo post. those are the best blogs anyway, right? yes. here it goes...

the riddles invited us to go to a lake. we had a good time. here is ryan, jourdan and maxwell splashing around. cute.

i just have to say that the riddles are adorable. amen.

arizona has pretty sunsets. they kind of make up for the heat. ;)

i went to girl's camp 2 weeks ago! our ward in phoenix was lacking in leaders so i promised them i would still go. it was so fun. cute, cute girls. our cabin was all first years and they kept us busy! everyone kept asking me if i was a first year. do i really look like i'm 12 years old?! oh man.

this is my friend stephanie cannon. she and i were "cabin moms" together. fun times!

cute little maren and natalie. giggling all the time!

the theme for camp was the olympics. our cabin represented the great land of mexico! i'd say we represented well. mustaches and all. i'm so glad i got to go to girls camp! it's much more fun as a leader. ;)

this is from Independence Day! i definitely failed at taking pictures throughout the day. i blame it on the heat?

 our festivities included a bbq with the riddles, chris and his sweet wife shelly. they are from england and chris trained jourdan and ryan at their new jobs here in AZ. they are the nicest people and it was fun to spend some time with them. we also swam and watched some fireworks with the riddles. we are very grateful to have friends here in AZ! 

we both have callings in our new ward. i am the yw secretary again! i couldn't be happier to be serving with the yw still. so great! jourdan is the ward.....SCOUT MASTER! haha we were both very shocked when he was extended the call. i wish i could've snapped a photo of jourd's face. a bit overwhelmed. he will be great and is already the coolest scout master around. we are happy and loving our lives. 

we love you all so very much! stay safe and happy. xo

do people live here?!

so jourdan and i watched "temple grandin" last night. it's a really good movie about an autistic lady who is awesome. anyway, this clip portrays PERFECTLY what it's like to go outside in arizona. oh this blessed state. :) sorry for the short post! updates soon, i promise! xo

new everything!

wow. it's been almost 1 month. whoops! there is so much to update. here we go...

starting off on a bit of a sad note... the 1987 toyota camry died. R.I.P. it surprised both of us because we were sure that the toyota would out-live the taurus (jourdan's car). poop town for sure. it was a sad day. we sold it to a junk yard and i really did tear up a little when i drove away. ridiculous? most likely.

we went to utah and had a wonderful time! every single minute of our vacation up north was spent doing great things. we were very busy! one of jourdan's very dear friends was married in salt lake. it was a grand celebration and fun for us to see our friends and catch up.

hofe and jourdan. handsome fellas!

we also went to 2 more weddings, took some family photos with the smith's, our nephew wesley was blessed, and spent lots of time with family and friends.

jourdan had to fly back to AZ on sunday night but i got to stay for a couple more days. i cut lots of hair and also went to the imagine dragons show in orem. wow. it was an incredible show. i am so proud of daniel wayne. it was so fun to spend time with ALL of my siblings. everyone's pretty spread out, living in different states, so that doesn't happen very often. a grand time indeed. 

the venue was packed. it was unreal.

some of the siblings.

completely random, i know. i made a quick stop at IFA to look at the baby bunnies. i wanted to take them all to AZ with me. they are so precious, i can't even handle it.

after we both came back to arizona, we immediately started packing up our things, again! everything went smoothly with our move to mesa. thankfully, we had lots of help loading and unloading the truck. we are very grateful for the missionaries, friends, and family who were so kind to help us out. of course, it was 100+ degrees the day we moved! but, we did it and are so glad it's over. :) our new place is so nice and spacious. we are really lucky.

i got a part-time job at Anthropologie in Scottsdale. i've really liked it so far! i just love everything in that store. we do get an employee discount but i still wouldn't be able to afford anything in there. haha its been a lovely place to work though and i am grateful to have the job.

jourdan is really loving his new job at CAE Oxford. he and ryan riddle have been car-pooling which has been nice! their instructor flew out from england just to train them. pretty cool! we had him over for a barbeque the other day. he's such a nice guy and it was fun to chat with him. he invited us to come to england and stay in his house in the country. i believe we will, one day. :)

bbq with chris (instructor), the riddles, and the ballards. good time.

daniel and alex were in town for a couple days so we had them over for dinner on sunday. jourdan went to pick them up and on the way back, the taurus died. haha pretty hilarious, right? pretty sure it has something to do with the engine (same thing happend with the toyota). probably not worth spending the money to fix it. so, we were car-less for a couple days. my dad surprised us with a couple of really good car deals. we are both still shocked that went from zero cars to 2 cars within a day. we are very blessed to have such supportive and loving parents. good grief.  we are so grateful. we had some more visitors come into town too. we always love that. my mom and niece chloe came down for a couple days. chloe turned 12, which is absolutely crazy to me! how is she that old?! we all went to imagine dragons, shopping, swam, and took chloe to the temple to do baptisms. it was her first time and it was so fun to be there with her. fond memories for sure.

here we are hanging out before the show. love all of these people so much!

love and miss you all oh so much! 

xo, mr. and mrs. smith

faster, higher, stronger...

once upon a time i volunteered for the utah special olympics with my dear friend, mallory. we had so much fun and it was such a neat experience to help out with such a special event. so, i had the thought to volunteer for the arizona special olympics! jourdan and i went and it was so great. there ended up being way more volunteers than expected (which is a good problem to have), so the volunteer jobs were slim. but we ended up cheering for some of the competitors and then we spent the rest of the time setting up tables and food for their lunch feast. i loved seeing how purely happy they all are. amazing. it was splendid and another great memory to add to our collection.

somehow, word got around in our stake that mr. smith and i are "accomplished violinists". lol for realz. jourdan got an email from a high priest in the stake asking us to be the entertainment for the stake high priest social. jourdan told him that we aren't at all accomplished at the violin BUT that we do play a little bit of bluegrass/folk music. oh boy. the stake representative got really excited and said that bluegrass would be even better! so, we spent a few weeks practicing, learning new songs, and me growing some calluses again. let's just say that it's been a long while since i've really played. the social went really well and we had so much fun! there were about 200 ish old folks there. i almost threw up. (darn those nerves) but, it was a success. people were singing along and clapping their hands! so fun. i'm glad we did it. another great memory. :)

pre shin dig.

gettin' ready to pick away!

silly face mr. smith. :)

 jourdan heard about a "mountain", more like a hill, that you can walk up and watch the airplanes take off and land right over you. pretty cool. so, we went exploring. i wore the wrong shoes. whoops. but, we eventually made it to the top and it was awesome. it almost felt like i could just reach up and touch the planes that flew right over us. we also enjoyed the sunset and took some silly pictures. of course. ;)

the runways are right behind mr. smith. pretty neat!

eagle feather=native american time? 

pretty sky.

 we are still loving our time in arizona. we have met some wonderful people. also, jourdan got a new job! he really enjoyed his time at transpac but he found a better job in mesa. we found an apartment already and will be moving in a few weeks. it's all happened very fast! it's bitter/sweet. we love our ward here a lot and we are so sad to leave but we know that there will be many more great experiences to come. mesa, here we come! also, we are coming up north for a few days! one of jourdan's dearest pals is getting married and my nephew wesley is getting blessed. we are excited to see everyone that we can! stay happy and good. xo

family time, music time, happy time.

hey there! we've had lots of visitors within the last couple of weeks. oh how we love visitors! first, jourdan's family came. Ronald, April, Spencer and Meilin. we did lots of fun things! we went to a native american museum.  so interesting, i love museums. i think spencer and meilin got a little bored, haha, but it was fun for me to spend time with jourdan's sweet family. we also went to the phoenix zoo, ate a delicious dinner at Bobby Q's, swam and had a fun bbq at our apartment. jourdan's  grandma and grandpa came down with his aunt shauna and cousin stacey, so we had a big get together with them and bryant and taryn's family too. so fun to see them all! i don't know what was wrong with me, i didn't take very many pictures! i've got to get better at that. we were so sad that Justine, Mitchell, and the Wilkins trio couldn't make it down. you were dearly missed. hopefully next time!

stuffing our faces at bobby q's. it was very delicious!

a few days later some of my family came down too. mom, g&g littleford and my aunt julie came to see alex's last ballet performance for this season. they were only here for a short time but it was a grand time for sure. they got pretty lost trying to get to our apartment from the airport but it all turned out. we all (except for jourdan, the asians needed him) headed down to tucson and enjoyed watching alex in the ballet. she is a beautiful dancer and we are all so proud of her. love that girl!

my grandpa always loves to fiddle with my phone. i was amazed to see this photo that HE had taken of himself. haha love that man so much...

we ate dinner at the deer valley airport restaurant, where jourdan works. it was really cool! the food was pretty delicious. and it was fun to watch all the airplanes land and take off.

jourdan and my gramps talking about the air boats and stuff or whatever.

cute.

oh how i LOVE this pretty lady!

how cute are they? my grandma became a celebrity with that shirt! lots of people commented on it. she's a huge fan. ;)

 also, wasn't conference amazing?! i love the gospel of Jesus Christ. so much. i love president uchtdorf's talk about hope and light. really though, every single talk was incredible. i couldn't possibly pick a favorite. i am grateful for the light that Christ is in my life. the Atonement is real. His love is what brings color into my life and i hope that we can all remember that His is way is the ONLY way to true joy and peace. let us all be a little more kind, a little more faith driven and a little more hopeful. amen. :)

anywho, we are always sad to see family and loved ones leave but we love having them here and appreciate them so much! :)

jourdan and i were lucky enough (thanks to our tax return) to go to a sigur ros show last week. they are an amazing band from iceland. it. was. INCREDIBLE. seriously, we were both absolutely blown away.

just waiting for sigur ros to bring happiness to our ears. so excited! also, that is a piece of licorice in jourdan's mouth. just to clear up any confusion.

we splurged and tried out a sushi place before the show. it's always a risk trying out new sushi. this place was alright. we will continue our sushi journey though. but, they did bring out our first roll, which was on fire! it was pretty neat.

 we love you all so very much! stay good. xo

o hi o, abel scievers, 1/2 year of marriage?!...

hey all. well, we have been busy with great things, making fond memories. Jourd's two good pals from flight school both got jobs at Transpac with Jourdan! Ryan Riddle is a dear friend from Jourd's neck of the woods and Justin Ballard, who played hockey with my brothers. woo! Jourdan is excited to have them here! it'll be fun for sure. :)

Also, Jourdan has a friend Nathan Harriman who lives in Mesa with his cute little family. he and jourdan served around each other in Ohio. anywho, we went to the temple with him and had a grand time! after the temple we met up with his wife Emily and daughter Lily. a fun bunch of folks!

we have a new favorite temple trip tradition. we went here before the temple session. t.c. eggington's is a delicious little cafe. so good!

this pancake is bigger than my head!

 

Jourdan and Nathan. cute.

in other news, jourdan and i recently celebrated our half year of marriage mark! woohoo! we decided to celebrate by attempting to make abel skievers. it's a smith family tradition to make these for general conference. we cheated. ;) they're a scandinavian "breakfast" but they are more like a dessert, breakfast makes us feel better. :) we were successful! they were delicious.

cooking away!

then we, at the last minute, decided to go camping! i've been a little bit leery about camping...IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT. haha it actually turned out so great! one of the campgrounds right next to ours is called Scorpion Bay. this made jourd a bit nervous. scorpions are his worst nightmare. and then we found one!

you kinda have to look close to see it. little creep blends in. gross, right?

our cute little campsite. first one for this mr. and mrs. smith! :)

jourdan is good at skipping rocks.

We had such a fun time. however, we did not get the best night's rest. i was the first one to notice the mysterious "foot steps" right outside of our tent. i, of course thought it was some crazy person about to kill us both, or a zombie (stupid 'walking dead' show), or a scorpion? alls i know is that my imagination goes all kinds of crazy when i'm in a strange place, at a strange hour, and apparently delirious.

 so, i woke up jourdan and asked him if he would protect me. yes, i am 8 years old.

for the next hour or so, i heard some hee hawing, which was... really weird. we finally decided to just look outside and sure enough, wild donkeys. we later learned (thanks to the visitors center) that this strange desert land has burro's (wild donkeys), EVERYWHERE. at one point during the night there were about 10 or more of them roaming around our campsite. it was unreal but an adventure indeed! 

i can't believe we've been married for 6 months! i know, not very long at all, but it has flown by. i love my hugsband jourdan. he is the most wonderful fella and i am very grateful to have him for always and eternity. 

love and miss you all! xo