Our New Home

As some of you know, we have moved in with Jacob's parents. We live in the basement, across the hall from his sister Elisabeth and her husband Alex. This is a wonderful opportunity. It's a great blessing that his parents were willing to provide a place for us to live while Jacob and I are in school! I can't even tell you how much we had to spend on books this semester alone, because it's absolutely ridiculous! Not only has this been a blessing financially, it is great to have support and kinship from your family. It's not like there aren't any new challenges with our new circumstances, but it's just like everything else in life. You do the best you can and enjoy life! The blessings always outshine the challenges!



We were so excited when our room was finally "done" and set up. We're still trying to find space for a couple more picture frames, and my tons and tons of pajamas that I can't seem to part with. It's a weird fetish I have, so we will find a place for ALL of my comfy clothes! :) But the room is for the most part how it'll be for at least the next year or two. So come take a look!

Labor Day & Our Trip to Washington

LaBoR DaY!We went boating! Believe it or not, this was our first boating trip all summer! sad but at least we got one good run in! Jake loves to knee board and ski! He is pretty good too. He can do some cool tricks!

I got a new wake board last summer. I tried and tried and tried to get out of the water on it, but was out of luck. When I did get up, I was up for about 3 seconds before I fell. But this weekend it happened! The first try, I popped right out of the water and stayed up for longer than 3 seconds! I was a little overly ecstatic about it!


The water was FREEZING! But we had so much FUN!


BeAuTy PaRloR!

This weekend Elisabeth and I decided to play beauty parlor with our nieces, Lexus and PorSha. We even cut Lexus' hair! We also did their makeup.

Lexus had a lot of hair! Her hair is still long, but we chopped a lot off!

Elisabeth on makeup duty, Jake on picture duty, and me on styling duty.

The final Look! Her new hair looks so CUTE

wAsHiNgToN!!!

We have had a wonderful summer, jam-packed full of fun! This August we took Alex and Elisabeth to Washington to experience the fabulous North West! :) Jake served his mission in the Tacoma mission in Washington. I grew up in a suburb of Seattle, so we wanted them to see how absolutely amazing the evergreen state is! We may have done them an injustice by letting them experience Washington, because who wants to go back to the desert after you have experienced the luscious green beauty of the North West?

Us on top of the space needle!

Pregnant??? Nope, just full of poulsbo pizza...

One of my favorite past times, picking wild blackberries! So fun, and so yum!

Hiked part of Mt. Rainier! Taylor came along too, which made it a hundred times better!

Took a tour of the "old" Seattle, which is underground. We found Jake's hotel!

Fremont troll

We had a blast! It was awesome to see my family! It was fun to do the tourist part of Washington. And it was wonderful sharing a trip with Alex and Elisabeth.

Paradise!

Mom and Dad Hoffmann took us to Hawaii in June, with our brothers and sisters! It was a blast, and the trip of a lifetime! We wish we could share every amazing thing that we did while on this trip, but that would be quite a long post! So, we picked a few of our favorites to share with you!

Jacob got to go golfing with some of his brothers the first day we were in Hawaii! They had a ton of fun!

(Alex, Jake, Ben, Jason)

Our second day on Kauai we went on a helicopter tour of the island.

Captain Jacob Hoffmann of the USS Missouri. This was probably one of Jake's favorite excursions that we went on. We saw Pearl Harbor and toured the USS Missouri in the same day, and he was on Cloud 9.

We played on the beach, went boogy boarding, and found a new friend!

We were able to enjoy seeing the grounds of the Laie Temple. Unfortunately the temple was closed during our trip, so we were not able to enjoy the inside.

We went to the Polynesian Cultural Center and played all day! We learned how to do a Tongan dance, play local games, throw spears, and make coconut bread. We went to the dinner and show that the PCC provided at the end of our day.

Jake and Josh are putting our spear throwing lessons to good use!

The Dole Plantation, where we were able to sample tasty pineapple. We also picked an oyster and got a pearl while we were here!

Para-sailing was AMAZING! We even got a dip in the ocean on our way back to the boat!

The Hilo Burger Joint is a local joint in... you guessed it, HILO! They have games for you to play while you wait for your meal... Jacob's practicing for his next surgery!

We saw a few beautiful waterfalls. We took a small hike to see this one.

I decided to take the path not taken... Flash back from my barefoot days of running around in the woods as a kid!

The Black Sand Beach, where the sand really is black! This beach was gorgeous!

And people wonder how Jacob fell in love with me.

This was on of my favorite activities! We snorkeled in Maui.

Jacob absolutely loves Forest Gump! How fitting!

We also got to spend some time with our nephew Grant. CUTE! Baby Grant added so much fun to our vacation!

We really did have a BLAST! We can't wait for our next Adventure! Thank you to M&D Hoffmann for this wonderful opportunity! Hawaii is amazing, but even better with family!

What's happening at the Hoffmann house

Life gets busy but it's always full of fun! So here is an update of what we've been up to lately!
We have found that we love to cook together! Jacob can crack an egg with one hand and not get any shells in his mix! I can't even do that with two hands!It's a good thing I made us some aprons, because you will rarely find Jacob cooking in something other than a white shirt!

J is a much better baker than I am so I usually let him do the baking! And his cake was DELICIOUS!Rodney (My dad-in-law) taught me how to do some Utah gardening, which you'll see from the pictures of the green beans we planted, is a lot harder than gardening in Washington. it seems like things just like to grow in WA but they have a harder time when planted in rocky clay soil by inexperienced hands. Rod did one row and I did the other... that way we would be assured that something would grow ;)

Can you guess what row I planted? Yes, that would be the shabby one with the giant gap in the middle! I'm so proud of my little bean plants even if I only got a few. They're about 2 inches tall now, and believe it or not several more have popped up and are starting to catch up with the othersYesterday I ran the Nestles 5K in Springville! I made pretty good time... for me anyway. I ran the race with Janni which was super fun! It was nice to have a running buddy, especially for the GIGANTIC hill we had to climb!We're just so excited that we actually made it up that killer hill!

We forgot to tell you that Jacob had surgery on February 18th. He had a warn rotator cuff that just wasn't getting better with physical therapy, so surgery was the next step.

I'm pulling off his original bandage so we can get him cleaned up and put a new bandage on. and boy was that stuff STICKY! OUCH!

After a couple weeks of healing he went back to physical therapy to fully recover.