Christmas is in the air!!

Hey everyone!

Well it's getting close to that time of year again and of course Matt and I have put up lights! I love them! Mostly because they are pretty but also because it makes it really easy to find our house. :) (we're the only ones on the street with any lights up). Matt and I were laughing about how many lights we ended up putting on our little house. I think we used about 1,500 total just outside. Yes we know that's a lot for our little house but we were having a lot of fun!!
We also got our tree up (I'll have Matt take some pictures to post), and are so grateful for how cheap it all was. My wonderful Mom bought us an angel for our tree and a beautiful nativity to make it a real Christmas. Because it just wouldn't be Christmas without remembering the birth of the Savior and all the miracles that came with it!!
Setting up Christmas with Matt has been fantastic. I loved helping him decide where to put what color of lights and being able to share my love of this season with him, as well as learning about his love for it. We found out that we both think that Christmas music before December is nauseating, but we both love "Mo Tab" Christmas music. However, we both realize that once we start having kids we may have to suffer though some of the other corny music.
Besides being burnt out at school that's basically all that's new! Matt's still working hard and doing his best for the last two weeks, and I'm doing the same. But needless to say we are both very much looking forward to the upcoming Christmas break. It'll be so nice to just rest, relax, spend time with each other and our families and of course take a trip to work at an orphanage in Mexico. Oh and we can't forget sleeping in!!

But it's back to the books for a little while longer!

Always,

Matt and Melanie Long

News and Updates!

Matt and I are busy as always. Matt with school and his countless jobs programing/panel building for the Space Center where he works. His school is taking up most of his time though. Which is to be expected when he's taking 16 credits and spends about 21 hrs a week in class and then does homework during his breaks.
For me, I just finished a painting job and have two quilting jobs waiting for me :). I'm loving the Pediatric side of my Mother/Baby Nursing class. And yes I am counting down the months/weeks/days until I graduate in September 2010. I'm also preparing for the NCLEX-PN (which is a national test I have to pass in order to get my LPN). And that has been interesting, I've had to reach back to the beginning of the year and things I learned in Fundamentals of Nursing back in January. I'm so glad that I started reviewing now!!
Last night we had a few friends over for FHE and had a lot of fun. We had a really good lesson about testimonies and the the power of a strong testimony and what we need to keep it that way. For our activity we made Squished Witch Cremes which is
1 c peanut butter
1/4-1 c powedered sugar
1/2 c sweetened condensed milk
1 c Chocolate Chips
then you just mix it up and enjoy! it's like an inside out Reese's. I liked them a lot, we'd joked about making a whole batch and then giving it to one of the couples that didn't make it. But we ended up just calling them about 12 times instead. It was funny. We were having a major high school flash back.
But it's back to studying for me!

~Melanie

Little update and questions!

       Matt and I are currently attending a Married-Student ward (BYU 139th) and we both enjoy it...for the most part. Matt likes it and is really enjoying it. I however lost a lot of my social-butterfly-ness in the last two years (slightly depressing). So any idea how to get a little of it back? I've thought about going to talk to the Relief Society president and asking her if I could be put in charge of some type of enrichment night thing (like teach basic sewing/knitting or something) so that I would be forced to talk/interact with the ladies in my ward...but I'm not really sure how that would go over with her (don't want to step on toes and whatnot...)

       Umm lets see what else is new... so far nothing really. Matt's still working on the panels for the Space Center. Last night when we were talking about them he found out that he needs to drill some more holes in order to mount it. So he's going to be getting that done sometime in the near future, and once that's done, we are going to be building the panels together. He has two that are exactly the same, just mirror-images of each other, so I'll do one and he'll do one. Mostly just to give me an excuse to spend time with him, but also to help lighten out his load. I'm also going to be building the boxes they will be mounted to as well as a drawer/hidden panel for the Galileo. Hopefully I can get it to work/look how I'm picturing it...but we'll see!

       OH! PS. Don't EVER stain outside in the sunlight. BAD BAD BAD idea. I, for some reason unknown to me, did this and now I get the lovely chance to sand the entire thing down and re-stain. Thankfully I only stained one of the pieces of furniture and not both. But if nothing else, it'll give me some more to do while Matt's doing all his homework/work. :)

       We finally figured out most of the Christmas presents for this year, and yes I'm making all but one of the ones that we've decided on right now...now we just need to figure out what to get for our nephews...currently I'm starting to think that a card with money sounds good... or else a gift card to somewhere... any ideas? They are 15 (?) and 9 (?).

Thanks!!

Life

Hey everyone!

       Life is still just going like normal for us! Matt is always busy with work and school. He just started a new project for the Space Center. He's going to be making the Panels of the new Galileo. I'm excited to see them when they are done! He does amazing work on them! Other than that there's really nothing new for him.

       I have this week off at school so I'm going to be working on some things around the house that I really want done. Like staining our furniture, touch up painting, finishing the drawers/doors in the hallway and finishing up all the Christmas presents for the Long side of the family. And of course, homework in between all that. I'm actually glad that I don't have class this week so that I can get ahead on my homework and get all the little things done around the house. :)
Oh! Question for everyone...I'm running out of ideas for dinners this week, currently all I can think to make I've made in the last two weeks or else it just doesn't sound good... I'm thinking about doing Haystacks for one of the nights but I'm not really sure of what else to do. Any ideas?
Thanks!!

The M&M Long Family

Hi Everyone!

So this is a blog I just set up to introduce our new family!!

Matt and I got married on Aug 13, 2009, we're both currently in school. Matt is studying to be a Mechanical Engineer at BYU and I'm working towards getting my RN from Provo College. Both of us plan on going on to get Masters.

We both love being outside and doing anything that we can think of. Currently we have a nightly tradition of watching Stargate SG-1 on Hulu and we love it! However, they only have 6/10 seasons up on Hulu and we're almost done watching them. And suggestions on what to watch next?

umm lets see what else can I tell you about us... Matt comes from a family of 4 kids and is the first to get married. I come from a family of 11 kids and I'm the 7th to get married. between the two of us we currently have 21 nieces and nephews, with one more on the way (all from my side).

and that's basically us!!