NEW BLOG
For some reason our blog stopped working....all we can do is post and nothing else. SO if you do read our blog we are at...www.mandbhebdon.blogspot.com. JOIN US!
Meanwhile...
A lot has happened since we last blogged. A LOT LOT LOT! We got home from the half marathon and went back to work. At the end of the week Brandon was unexpectedly called into the office where he was swiftly and suddenly laid off! The blame was solely on the economy. It was pretty crappy, especially since it was basically right before the holidays. HO HO HO Happy Holidays...your fired. So the next week we went to Megans brothers place in the Phoenix area for Thanksgiving and for the blessing of thier new baby. We came back, and Megan went to work, and Brandon started looking for jobs. He had a couple of interviews, and was offered a position! But it didnt feel like the right thing, and it would only be a year long, so he turned it down knowing that there was a higher power that had a better plan. So he kept looking, and had a couple more interviews. Then on December 23rd we left for Washington to be with Brandons family for Christmas. It was a great visit! We were in Royal for a few days, then spent a couple days at Ensign Ranch with the entire Kieth and Idris Hebdon family (Bs grandparents), then we spent a couple of days in Seattle/Silverdale with our awesome friends from BYU-I, then we flew home to California. On Monday (Jan 3rd) Brandon had an interview with the VP of a company that he had an interview with a couple weeks previously. The interview went extremely well, and early the next morning (Jan 4th) they called to offer him a job! and the next morning (Jan 5th) Brandon was headed to work again! WOW what a blessing! The job is in downtown Los Angeles, which is kind of a long commute. However, we carpool together till we get to the street where Megans work is and where there is also a train station. Megan goes to the gym nearby and Brandon gets on the 5:58 train for a trafficless and carefree ride to Union Station, then the subway takes him next door to the building that he works in. Quick and painless. On the way home is even better because Brandon gets to the station just a few minutes after Megan gets off work, and we ride home together again and live happily ever after.
We FINISHED
This week Brandon and I geared up for our 1/2 Marathon that we were running in Malibu. I had two sisters come out from NC to run with us and then my mom and my other sister that lives in California walked while the rest of us ran it. It was great. The first eight miles I was pacing off of a lady and we were cruising doing about 8:30 to 9 minute miles. Brandon ran with me most of the first mile and then he dropped back after that. The first eight miles were great but then we hit a hill and it was a 6% grade. Most of you are thinking..."oh that's nothing..." I would love to see you say that when you have just ran 8 MILES. IT WAS BRUTAL. So at the top of that hil my hip flexors just locked up. They just decided they were not going to be doing any more flexing or moving. So I started to walk/run. I would walk for 5 or so minutes and then run for 10 or so because it just hurt so stinking bad and there were 6 miles of "rolling hills" which felt like the we were running in the Rocky Mountains. I am not sure what Brandon was doing but he said he was just going slow and steady and just trying to enjoy the scenery. It was beautiful but it was HOT. I guess that is a plus about running in Malibu in November. I have never gotten a sunburn in November before! So we finished and I just about cried when I got to the end. I tried to watch Brandon finish but I lost him in the crowd and we met up with him later to watch my mom, who has parkinsons and a brain cyst, and who nobody thought could do it let alone finish the race, finish. I got to wrap my arm around her and help her across the finish line. I AM SO PROUD OF HER! She is a champ and shows me that just because life gives us lemon's that we can't make lemonade! I was crying just at the pure joy that I had that she was strong enough and wanted to fight through all the pain just to finish a goal she had set. I think we can all learn a lesson from that. I am so proud of Brandon too. He didn't have any time to train working so much and it was so hard and he finished in around 3 hours. With both of us working full time it was hard for either of us to be able to train but we did it! We finished and that is all that matters! plus it was so cool to get a big honkin' medal and beach towel for participating.
Love you all!
Love you all!
We are Alive
We haven't posted in forever...we know. Sorry about that. We are alive and we are well. We have been so busy between work, house work, and church work (service really...but I wanted to keep the "work" theme going). We have had a couple of fun adventures like when we got to go out to Greg and Adena's and be there for Ethan's beautiful blessing and being able to see our nieces and nephew play sports (full day of soccer and football).
The house is coming along...slowly...but it's coming. We did get a couch from Greg and Adena and that takes up a lot of room which is great because we had a lot of room to fill. It is mostly painted (besides the future kids bedrooms, downstairs bathroom which is bright orange at the moment and my craft room. We just figured that since we don't use those rooms very much right now that they can wait until we have more time and until we don't hate painting with a passion. We are getting free tile and grout from a hook-up that Brandon has through work so we are going to be tiling our bathrooms and we figure we will paint those at the same time. We are also getting a free pedestal sink from someone that I work with to fix up the downstairs bathroom...but again... that will wait until the floors are tiled.
We are learning that one of the hardest things in life is learning how to balance it all. Between our marriage, work, the house, church callings, and finding time to have a hobby or at least do something that we like....we are having a tough time but I am sure we will figure it all out in time. It might not ever get easier but life wasn't meant to be easy because you don't grow as an individual when it's easy...you have to "work out" your own salvation so that is what we are working on....and will forever continue to work on.
We love you all...and hopefully more posts will be coming since we will soon be getting internet at home! YAY!!
The house is coming along...slowly...but it's coming. We did get a couch from Greg and Adena and that takes up a lot of room which is great because we had a lot of room to fill. It is mostly painted (besides the future kids bedrooms, downstairs bathroom which is bright orange at the moment and my craft room. We just figured that since we don't use those rooms very much right now that they can wait until we have more time and until we don't hate painting with a passion. We are getting free tile and grout from a hook-up that Brandon has through work so we are going to be tiling our bathrooms and we figure we will paint those at the same time. We are also getting a free pedestal sink from someone that I work with to fix up the downstairs bathroom...but again... that will wait until the floors are tiled.
We are learning that one of the hardest things in life is learning how to balance it all. Between our marriage, work, the house, church callings, and finding time to have a hobby or at least do something that we like....we are having a tough time but I am sure we will figure it all out in time. It might not ever get easier but life wasn't meant to be easy because you don't grow as an individual when it's easy...you have to "work out" your own salvation so that is what we are working on....and will forever continue to work on.
We love you all...and hopefully more posts will be coming since we will soon be getting internet at home! YAY!!
We got the keys!
On Thursday we got a call from our Realtor who informed us that she had the keys to our wonderful new home!!! So of course we had to go right out there as soon as we got off work and get them. We waited for our Realtor to leave before we started to dance and go "OH MY GOSH THIS IS OUR HOUSE!" So we have some pictures for you. We painted friday night after work and then all day saturday and we have pictures of that too! We will post more pictures as soon as we move in and get set up!
Family Time
We got a quick dose of family time when we made the trip up to WA last week for Skyler and Lisa's wedding. It was so great to see everyone and to be able to participate in such a wonderful occasion. We had a lot of firsts this trip;
First time flying in and out of pasco
First time meeting Auger Wayne Hebdon (and he is THE CUTEST)
First time being at one of Brandon's brother's sealings
First time helping decorate/take down for a reception
First time eating Brandon's mom's Rhubarb pie (for megan...def not for Brandon)
First time eating Lime Pear Delight (for megan...Brandon is a veteran)
First time meeting Aunt Leighanne and Brian and their kids.
So as you can see just from the list above we had a great time. We love seeing family and were very sad to leave. We can't wait until we get to visit with them again and hopefully it wont be such a quick trip. I have been trying to convince Brandon that we need to move up there but he reminded me of how cold it gets in the winter, how hard farming is, and how I wouldn't be able to find a job and that pretty much sealed the deal for us staying in California (at least until the babies come....then we might have to revisit the idea...I want my kids to know their family!)
We love the Hebdons and we love being Hebdons. It's always a blessing to know that we come from a long line of great people!
First time flying in and out of pasco
First time meeting Auger Wayne Hebdon (and he is THE CUTEST)
First time being at one of Brandon's brother's sealings
First time helping decorate/take down for a reception
First time eating Brandon's mom's Rhubarb pie (for megan...def not for Brandon)
First time eating Lime Pear Delight (for megan...Brandon is a veteran)
First time meeting Aunt Leighanne and Brian and their kids.
So as you can see just from the list above we had a great time. We love seeing family and were very sad to leave. We can't wait until we get to visit with them again and hopefully it wont be such a quick trip. I have been trying to convince Brandon that we need to move up there but he reminded me of how cold it gets in the winter, how hard farming is, and how I wouldn't be able to find a job and that pretty much sealed the deal for us staying in California (at least until the babies come....then we might have to revisit the idea...I want my kids to know their family!)
We love the Hebdons and we love being Hebdons. It's always a blessing to know that we come from a long line of great people!
Pictures!!
We have been promising pictures and so we will now deliver! (Sorry it took so stinkin' long!)
So the picture order goes from Left to Right on each line.
This is the front door and then what you see when you walk in. So the first thing you see when you walk in is the stairs to the left which go upstairs to the four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Then you see the dining room and to the right of the dining room is what we are calling the "reading room" because library sounds too posh. As you can see we are going to need LOTS and LOTS of primer and paint to cover up that dark dark red!
Then you can go left out of the dining room through to the kitchen, living room, green room (which will be my craft room until we have kiddies) and slider to the outside. The kitchen is nice and big and where our inspector is standing is a huge island so that is nice. Off of the kitchen you also have our laundry room which in a perfect world would be upstairs but hey...the world isn't perfect so we will make do.
This is the slider to the outside. My plan for this ONE DAY...probably when all of our kids have moved out and are married with kids we will change this to be three sets of french doors. We want the whole wall to basically open up to the backyard. That is our vision for right now at least. That will probably change by the time we actually have any money to do it. Anyway when you go outside we have patio and grass and then it looks out to a golf course. We are right near the putting green so we shouldn't have to worry about any flying golf balls or "Flight of golf balls" is what it says in our loan documents, we thought that was funny. Then you can see the back of the house which is pretty plain. The balcony on the second floor which is called a "sunning deck" apparently goes to the master bedroom which for some reason I don't have pictures of. On the bottom floor you can see that there are two sliders. One leads into the kitchen dining area (not pictured) and the other leads, like you saw, to the living room. I don't have any pictures of the front of the house but it has this big turret which is basically like a tower looking thing which Brandon absolutely LOVES.
So that is our house, in a nut shell. We love it and we are excited about creating many happy memories there. It will look different in about two weeks when we paint the whole thing and then the next step is to change the carpet, paint the cupboards white, and MAYBE tile a bathroom. We are going to do everything ourselves so it will always be a work in progress. We can't wait!
So the picture order goes from Left to Right on each line.
This is the front door and then what you see when you walk in. So the first thing you see when you walk in is the stairs to the left which go upstairs to the four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Then you see the dining room and to the right of the dining room is what we are calling the "reading room" because library sounds too posh. As you can see we are going to need LOTS and LOTS of primer and paint to cover up that dark dark red!
Then you can go left out of the dining room through to the kitchen, living room, green room (which will be my craft room until we have kiddies) and slider to the outside. The kitchen is nice and big and where our inspector is standing is a huge island so that is nice. Off of the kitchen you also have our laundry room which in a perfect world would be upstairs but hey...the world isn't perfect so we will make do.
This is the slider to the outside. My plan for this ONE DAY...probably when all of our kids have moved out and are married with kids we will change this to be three sets of french doors. We want the whole wall to basically open up to the backyard. That is our vision for right now at least. That will probably change by the time we actually have any money to do it. Anyway when you go outside we have patio and grass and then it looks out to a golf course. We are right near the putting green so we shouldn't have to worry about any flying golf balls or "Flight of golf balls" is what it says in our loan documents, we thought that was funny. Then you can see the back of the house which is pretty plain. The balcony on the second floor which is called a "sunning deck" apparently goes to the master bedroom which for some reason I don't have pictures of. On the bottom floor you can see that there are two sliders. One leads into the kitchen dining area (not pictured) and the other leads, like you saw, to the living room. I don't have any pictures of the front of the house but it has this big turret which is basically like a tower looking thing which Brandon absolutely LOVES.
So that is our house, in a nut shell. We love it and we are excited about creating many happy memories there. It will look different in about two weeks when we paint the whole thing and then the next step is to change the carpet, paint the cupboards white, and MAYBE tile a bathroom. We are going to do everything ourselves so it will always be a work in progress. We can't wait!
Big and Little News
Okay BIG news first...We BOUGHT a HOUSE! It is in Yucaipa, California which is right near Redlands. Redlands has THIS...
So we are VERY excited! Not only to own our own home but to be 10 minutes from the Temple. Pictures of the house will follow but for right now you just to have take our word for it that it is GORGEOUS. Not as pretty as The Lords House (pictured above) but we are going to make it our little slice of Heaven on earth! We are going to take a lot of "before" pictures of the house because the previous owners LOVED color. They loved deep, rich, three coats of primer to cover it, color. The good news is, after painting there isn't much else that we HAVE to do to make the house nice. Everything else was pretty much done. It is a 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 2500 sq ft house. Two car garage. HUGE. So our plan is to be able to expand our little family and have enough space for the two kids, the dog (one day... against Brandon's will) and of course any friends who may want to come for a visit and stay a while. There will be good food, great conversation, and many many memories made in this home.
Okay on to the little things....
We went to the beach for the fourth of July with some of our friends. We went down on friday, put up the tents, built a fire and had a great time! Saturday we went to the beach all day and I THOUGHT that Brandon and I put on enough sun screen...but we didn't. So we both fried. Thats okay though...that's part of the whole 4th of July experience right? Our campsite was literally one row of tents back from the sand so we could hear the waves rolling and it was just sooo nice. The campground was packed and there were kids running around like crazy and they would ride their bikes around and all the bikes were decorated for the 4th of July. It was cute. We learned how to make some new foods over campfires. One thing we learned and which I will never forget because it makes smores so much easier is the Fudge cookies. So you know the Keebler fudge striped cookies that have the whole in the middle and they have the fudge bottom with the cookie top? Well if you take two of those and add a marshmellow in the middle then you have a ready made smore! SO BRILLIANT I KNOW! Our good friends Jake and Grace taught us that little trick. We also learned how to make breakfast burritos by cooking eggs and veggies in plastic bags and boiling them. They were so yummy too and last but not least Pita Pizzas. Which were grilled over a fire and were so great! On Sunday the 4th we went to a nearby town called San Juan Capistrano to walk around a mission and an old Basilica. When we got our group there we looked at the price and they were charging to go in. Now I have a problem with this because at the LDS church sites you DO NOT have to pay to go in! So BOO for historical landmarks that make you pay. So we decided not to go in but because we are so tall (the one time this was something that I was happy about) we were able to reach our camera over the wall and this is what we were able to take a picture of...
The Basilica had just finished having Mass in it so we were able to go inside and this is what we saw...
Beautiful isn't it? Different kind of pretty than I am used to but beautiful none the less. So we did go to church on the 4th of July even though we all smelled like campfire and non of us had showered for a couple of days (just swam in the ocean which DOESN'T count) and even though it was a Catholic church and we didn't stay for mass, we were still there.
OKAY....I am closing up here and this is my last section because I KNOW this is a LONG Post. Brandon and I have been refurbishing old things that we find or buy on the cheap. A couple saturdays ago someone put this in their trash and so we stopped and loaded up our findings with great anticipation to fix up this "junk" and make it into a treasure and I think we have pretty much succeeded but you be the judge. So here is the BEFORE Photos....
Everything except the "H" that is a decoupage project that I finished! Came out cute huh?
Okay and here are the AFTERS....
So the little bench is just that... a little stool bench thingy and it just needs a coat of lacquer and then its complete and then the second with the cool fabric is an old school file cabinet that is completely made out of wood. We sanded it down, stained it again, and put fabric in the sections to give it a cool new feel to it and not just but a block of wood. We LOVE it!!
Our next project is this....
We will let you know how it goes! Oh yeah and we close on our house on Aug 15th so we will be moving in at the end of August!
So we are VERY excited! Not only to own our own home but to be 10 minutes from the Temple. Pictures of the house will follow but for right now you just to have take our word for it that it is GORGEOUS. Not as pretty as The Lords House (pictured above) but we are going to make it our little slice of Heaven on earth! We are going to take a lot of "before" pictures of the house because the previous owners LOVED color. They loved deep, rich, three coats of primer to cover it, color. The good news is, after painting there isn't much else that we HAVE to do to make the house nice. Everything else was pretty much done. It is a 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 2500 sq ft house. Two car garage. HUGE. So our plan is to be able to expand our little family and have enough space for the two kids, the dog (one day... against Brandon's will) and of course any friends who may want to come for a visit and stay a while. There will be good food, great conversation, and many many memories made in this home.
Okay on to the little things....
We went to the beach for the fourth of July with some of our friends. We went down on friday, put up the tents, built a fire and had a great time! Saturday we went to the beach all day and I THOUGHT that Brandon and I put on enough sun screen...but we didn't. So we both fried. Thats okay though...that's part of the whole 4th of July experience right? Our campsite was literally one row of tents back from the sand so we could hear the waves rolling and it was just sooo nice. The campground was packed and there were kids running around like crazy and they would ride their bikes around and all the bikes were decorated for the 4th of July. It was cute. We learned how to make some new foods over campfires. One thing we learned and which I will never forget because it makes smores so much easier is the Fudge cookies. So you know the Keebler fudge striped cookies that have the whole in the middle and they have the fudge bottom with the cookie top? Well if you take two of those and add a marshmellow in the middle then you have a ready made smore! SO BRILLIANT I KNOW! Our good friends Jake and Grace taught us that little trick. We also learned how to make breakfast burritos by cooking eggs and veggies in plastic bags and boiling them. They were so yummy too and last but not least Pita Pizzas. Which were grilled over a fire and were so great! On Sunday the 4th we went to a nearby town called San Juan Capistrano to walk around a mission and an old Basilica. When we got our group there we looked at the price and they were charging to go in. Now I have a problem with this because at the LDS church sites you DO NOT have to pay to go in! So BOO for historical landmarks that make you pay. So we decided not to go in but because we are so tall (the one time this was something that I was happy about) we were able to reach our camera over the wall and this is what we were able to take a picture of...
The Basilica had just finished having Mass in it so we were able to go inside and this is what we saw...
Beautiful isn't it? Different kind of pretty than I am used to but beautiful none the less. So we did go to church on the 4th of July even though we all smelled like campfire and non of us had showered for a couple of days (just swam in the ocean which DOESN'T count) and even though it was a Catholic church and we didn't stay for mass, we were still there.
OKAY....I am closing up here and this is my last section because I KNOW this is a LONG Post. Brandon and I have been refurbishing old things that we find or buy on the cheap. A couple saturdays ago someone put this in their trash and so we stopped and loaded up our findings with great anticipation to fix up this "junk" and make it into a treasure and I think we have pretty much succeeded but you be the judge. So here is the BEFORE Photos....
Everything except the "H" that is a decoupage project that I finished! Came out cute huh?
Okay and here are the AFTERS....
So the little bench is just that... a little stool bench thingy and it just needs a coat of lacquer and then its complete and then the second with the cool fabric is an old school file cabinet that is completely made out of wood. We sanded it down, stained it again, and put fabric in the sections to give it a cool new feel to it and not just but a block of wood. We LOVE it!!
Our next project is this....
We will let you know how it goes! Oh yeah and we close on our house on Aug 15th so we will be moving in at the end of August!
Baseball Games, Newport Beach Temple & Girls Camp
Here are some pictures of the Angels baseball game that we went to. Afterward we went to the Newport Beach Temple and then a week later I went off to Girls Camp and had a blast. So here are some pictures for your enjoyment!
MUD RUN 2010
Here are some pictures of the mud run that I participated in. It was so much fun and I can't wait to do it again. Although next year I will prepare just a little bit better. I finished in 38 minutes and was the first from my team. The guy that won did it in like 20 minutes and all he had on was a speedo and strap on sandals which is smart because the mud really adds a lot of weight on you while you are running. I felt like I weighed 20lbs more. It took me 45 minutes to get all the mud off of me and I for the first couple of days after I would blow my nose and dirt would come out (GROSS I KNOW!) I had it EVERYWHERE but it was well worth it! Brandon said he wants to do it next year too. He didn't get any pictures of me actually going through the obstacles because I was fast (not really....it was because I was covered in mud and so was everyone else and you can't tell whose who.) The whole event was to raise money for the sheriffs department and also the Children's Cancer Unit at Loma Linda University. They had bombs going off and guns shooting and people yelling at you throughout the course to make it feel more "military" I guess but it made me jump every time I heard them. They also had smoke machines and this pink smoke which made it hard to breathe while you are running but so did mud in your mouth and nose. I know a low of people probably are wondering "why would you put yourself through that?" but it is all about the high you get when you cross the finish line and know that you have pushed your body to do things you didn't think you could. It was GREAT!
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