The Holidays....

       Every year I tell myself that I'm going to do better about starting my Christmas presents early. And Of course I NEVER do. So these past two months have been filled with sewing machines, knitting needles, crochet hooks, slow cookers and of course my favorite baby in the entire world!! Which adding all of those together adds up to a very slow going at completing Christmas. But thanks to my AMAZING husband I was able to get everything done tonight!!! So I'm officially done and ready for Christmas and now I just get to sit back and relax!! (However, we still haven't sent out our Christmas Card this year... so for those of you getting it late I blame the baby ;) jk) I'm not going to spill any of what my needles and hooks have been doing since most of it will all go to family members, however for my lovely co-workers I made them all some amazing Apple Butter. I was planning on making them all some kind of snow flake to go with it, but I decided that my sanity and lack of stress was worth not doing them this year.

       But just to update on the Matthew Long family. We are all doing great and loving having that Dad is done with finals and can now help Mom get everything ready for our trip to Vegas. I'm loving that I can leave Eric home when I go to work this week, especially with how crazy it's been with last min gifts. I have to admit, with all the crazy kids/parents I see at work, I'm so grateful that Matt and I came from semi-normal families.

       Other then that life has been the same old thing, with bursts of joy watching Eric learn and grow. He's currently trying to figure out crawling and has moved a few times, but then Bray'Tac walks by or comes into his view and he just starts laughing and forgets about crawling. If I had to guess though,  I'd say Bray'Tac is soon going to be chased around the house by our little guy (at which point I will either spend the day filming the chase or playing hide and seek with Bray'Tac).

       But that's all the news for now!!


Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas!                               

It seems like Christmas comes and goes so quickly each year.  We can’t believe it’s been over a year since we were married!  It’s been a wonderful year.

The biggest news we have this year is that Melanie is pregnant!  She is currently 9 weeks pregnant and is due July 22nd.  The picture contained in this letter is the baby at 8 weeks.  We still have a ways to go, but we’re already getting the nursery ready and Melanie has been working on blankets, booties and clothes for our newest family member.  This will be grandchild #25 for Melanie’s parents, and grandchild #1 for Matt’s parents (great-grandchild #1 for Matt’s grandparents).

Melanie has finished up her schooling at Provo College and is preparing to that the NCLEX-RN.  She is also looking for a job as a nurse, but in the mean time is still working at Heindselman’s (knitting store) and is working a holiday job at a shipping company. 

Matt spent the summer in Oklahoma attending Basic Training for the Army.  He was gone the entire summer, leaving Melanie all alone at home.  It was tough for both of us, but we survived and it has brought us even closer.  Matt is currently serving with a Field Artillery Battery in the Utah National Guard. He spends one weekend a month and two weeks a year drilling with his unit.  He is also actively involved in the ROTC program at BYU where he is being trained to be an officer.  Matt still has a year and a half of school left before he graduates in Mechanical Engineering.

Bray’Tac, our Himalayan Lynx Point Siamese cat,  already suspects that he is going to be replaced as the baby of the family.  As of late, he has been very needy for attention whenever we’re around.  He’s a lot of fun.  He loves to play but also loves to cuddle.  He’s currently about a year and a half old.  (The name Bray’Tac comes from our favorite TV show Stargate.)

We hope everyone travels safely and look forward to seeing everyone this upcoming year!



Love,

Matt & Melanie Long

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!!