The Month of April!

How has life been since our last post? Well, it's been fun!! Skyped with my niece Monica, celebrated Easter with my parents, had Spring Break (just Laura), switched to Ubuntu, painted a cork board, set up my HAM radio, and got 2 new cats!

Monica is SO cute! I love all of my nieces. I have been pretty baby hungry as a result. But it's been fun! Spencer and I have adopted two cats in the meantime. One is named Lenny and she's at least 14 years old. She's white and beautiful and quite the shedder. With her came Missy, a little 3 year old. She is a calico kitty with quite an adventurous spirit. Both of them make sure you spend time petting them and are not afraid to tap your hands until you pet them. I love them already!

Missy the cat

Easter with my parents was AWESOME! Spencer and I went over to their house on Saturday and celebrated with some non-traditional "gringo tacos" (as my mom calls them). We also dyed hard boiled eggs. Spencer was beyond enthralled with this phenomenon. He couldn't remember the last time he had dyed them. It was so cute. I fell in love with him all over again.

Lenny the cat.

I had my spring break (APS and UNM were unaligned this year) and I CLEANED and ORGANIZED. That's in all caps to represent the amount of work that occurred. I also read and read and read and read a ton over spring break. And got all of my papers and such done for the rest of the semester. Woooo! Now it just needs to be finished!

I started to put our house in order and picked up a few art projects around the house to pretty it up in my usual way. One of these projects was to take two especially boring cork boards and paint them to look gorgeous! I love how they turned out. Next is to get the picture wall of family up by the kitchen table and paint our family crest. Our house is coming together so nice!

I switched to Ubuntu lately from Windows 7.... I just found that it was less frustrating and easier to get things done on. I still think Windows is a better system than Apple.... but this is all just semantics. I will still have to hold onto Windows to keep some of the programs for education and such up and running. And you really can't beat Microsoft Publisher with any other programs on Ubuntu.

I also need to keep the Windows to run all of my HAM radio programs! I've set up a loop antenna. With lots of help with my dad and Spencer. It was so fun! I can't wait to get all of my stuff figured out. Talking to people everywhere.... just really excited!! :D

Well life's been great! Hope your April was amazing too!
Lots of love,
The Leiter's (some of many)

Lots of fun with Spring on the way

Spencer was released (already!) from being the secretary of the elder's quorum and has now been called as the assistant ward financial clerk. In other words, he now helps to handle all the money things at the church. This does mean that he stays long hours after church on Sundays. However, I do get to have him home on week nights in exchange! So, I am overall pleased with it. We received a wonderful blessing when Spencer was set apart and still feel warm and fuzzy about it (well maybe the warm and fuzzy is just me, but we are grateful).

The Gilbert AZ temple we went to see.

Other things that happened..... I gave up on choir this semester! The music is crazy difficult (I think). But, I hope to have time to try again next semester. If I will have time with my first year of teaching on top of being in master's classes. It's going to be fun! Speaking of working next year, next week is the educator's job fair at UNM! I'm nervous. Spencer says it's all about talking to people. And he's right. But, it's still nerve wracking. Pray for luck for me! I know I got luck for the licensing exam I had and hope I did very well.

I have been working super hard to get the backyard weeded so we are ready to plant a garden this year. Boy oh boy are there WAY too many weeds. I had some help this last weekend and I still have so much to do! To help out I've planned a weeding party to get all of them pulled in time to plant yummies. Hopefully we'll get it all DONE.

There are lots of these in our yard.

Good news! I have another niece! My sister and her husband, Karen and Jose, have just had their third girl as of last week. I have yet to find time where we can Skype together. I'm excited to meet little Monica and see my other two nieces (super cute little girls). I hope that they love the baby blanket which I definitely finished in time. It looks like a turtle shell with the green and brown squares which I only see as an added benefit. ^_^

Cute little niece Monica. <3

Last week, Spencer and I went up to Tempe, AZ to see my little brother. Although, I guess he's not so little anymore. It was a blast! I love hanging out with my bro! And Spencer got to make it into a business trip and go to see the bike patrol that is run by the student EMS there at ASU. He's working on getting one up and running for UNM. We got to enjoy the absolutely beautiful campus with so much GREEN! It was like a green desert full of green dry brush. It was much different from the brown desert I hail from. The city was really large! But traffic was terrible. I love not having that much traffic where I live. The other highlight from our trip was we got to go to the newly dedicated Gilbert AZ Temple! It was stunningly lovely with a theme of agave.

Marching through March

This month is looking to be one that just gets more and more crazy everyday! The last couple of months have been wonderful! Since our last post, one whole semester FLEW by! And Spencer and I finally got married (way too long to wait for). Life has been fun and busy and I'm really loving being with Spencer everyday.

Happy Marriage to us!

This month for us will be SUPER busy! We have been doing lots and lots of chores this week so we're prepared for this month. Tuesday nights are fun for the both of us because we are doing the Institute Choir (which Spencer is now the president of). We've got TONS of songs yet to learn. This is a new experience for me. I've never been much into the choir thing, but I'm trying it out and we'll see how I like it.

I love this man and he loves me <3

 I've joined the relief society evening scripture study group that will be bi-weekly on Wednesdays. I really like it! We're covering The Gospel and the Productive Life manual. So far, I have gotten the opportunity to host the first ever one. Because of that (most likely), I have been "volunteered" as the person to get in touch with those who have said they are interested in coming. So, lots of emails! But, that's not too bad. I am also the secretary for the young women at church and so I send a weekly email out for them. It's easy to just get both done in the same sitting. Spencer is the secretary for the elder's quorum (adult men, for all you non-Mormon folk) and he has a weekly meeting on Wednesday nights at the same time as the study group! Supposedly there's a cooking group for Relief Society on the opposing Wednesdays of the study group. I think I'll join that one too so I have something to do while Spencer is at meetings.

Beautiful Mom and I (she just had a birthday on Monday!)

Thursday this semester is the longest day ever. I start out as high school starts with my always goal to leave the house by 6:40AM and then do tutoring after school until 3:30PM and then go straight to my college seminar for student teachers until 6:45PM. This ending time makes me late every week for the Thursday night young women activities which are from 6:30PM until 8PM most commonly. So this gets me home between 8 and 8:30PM. What an exhausting day. I pack a lunch and dinner these days! Spencer usually works on Thursday nights because I pretty much get home and go to bed and it's nicer to have nights together.

Fridays are free days! It's the only day that there is not tutoring after school. :) I usually go straight home to wake up Spencer (who often works that night). And weekends are usually peaceful and filled with chores as are Mondays except for the bi-weekly meeting I have for Teacher Education Graduate Student Association (TEGSA). Makes for a peaceful few days before massive chaos.

Hopefully with lots of this kind of dancing somewhere in there!!

All in all, life is good. Spencer and I have lots of goals for the year:
Go to the temple at least once a month (we'd really like to get twice)
Write in our journals weekly
Read scriptures together and separate daily
Pray together (as in, during prayer for morning and bed we both say something)
Start a vegetable garden (with this comes, weed the blanket of thorns)
Paint the inside of our house
Paint the outside of our house
Have a date every week
Have a double date every month
See the Kajder's (Laura's parents) at least every other week

...and that's all of them!
Now, I've got to go and study for my big license exam for teaching in two weeks and crochet a blanket for my new niece (so excited!) expected soon! And I'm sure Spencer is still sleeping.

A blanket that looks really similar to this (this was Sofia's). Amelia's was purple and gray and the new baby's will be brown and green (I love green and spring and all that stuff!)

A few months of a lot of busy....

Well hi there! I had made this goal to update the blog once a month.... and then I got busy. How are our lives going? BUSY! But, we continue to move forward. Some exciting things that have happened in the last few months are below:

I (Laura) have graduated from my undergraduate program from New Mexico State University with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. And I got accepted at the University of New Mexico for a Masters of Arts in Secondary Education with Licensure (i.e. becoming a high school teacher). As such, I am having a lot of student teaching coming up! I'll be working with Thomas Freyermuth (a chemistry teacher) at La Cueva High School here in Albuquerque. I'm a little terrified to already be stepping into a classroom even if the first semester is mostly observation. By springtime, I'll be teaching fairly regularly! It makes me nervous.

Find the Laura! :D

Other than that, I found a job for the summer here in Albuquerque working for the city at one of the public pools. No, I'm not a lifeguard. I run on batteries with my pump, and batteries tend to be anti-waterproof. However, I am enjoying cashiering and teaching lessons to young kids about the ages of my nieces (6 months to 3 years) with their parents. They are the cutest things ever. They are always super terrified of the water the first day, but after that, once they get warmed up and start to blow bubble and float in circles and sing songs, they are such a joy to teach. I sometimes get little presents from them like artwork!

 

Tom also graduated!

Spencer and I have not been doing much for the wedding as we are pretty much done with the wedding planning. All we have left for the most part is wedding doing! We sent out our save the dates in March as a postcard (which I rather liked). Unfortunately, I hear some of the pictures got messed up by the mailing system.... but such is life. I guess people will just have to wait for better pictures by coming to the wedding! We also got ourselves a DJ that plays some live guitar as well as DJ's some music in the ordinary way. I am STOKED to get on that dance floor in 6 months! Everyone who comes to my wedding had best be ready to dance! :) The only other things we need to do is pick some music, figure out the order of our reception/ring ceremony events, talk to a friend about making our wedding cakes, alter my dress/add some gosh darned sleeves, and mail out invites when the time is closer! All in all, it keeps coming together wonderfully.

AND! The most exciting thing that has happened lately is that Spencer and I have found a house! We bought a house in Albuquerque that Spencer will move into in August, and I in December. It is still a big purchase that I think is frightening. But, Spencer and I have plans to be in the 505 for the next decade or so and that was the way the chips fell.

 

Our new house (via the google maps view)!

I think that's everything! Spencer continues to work hard in paramedic school (due to end in about a month) and still makes time for family. He is doing his last bit of the program, the internship. So, he's out working in the far reaches of the area in fire stations (which he loves). I am really excited for him to be finished so that he can get to having a more regular schedule and sleep enough (hopefully)! I love him very much and we both send love to you all and wish you the best!