Starting my new job!

Hi everyone - sorry again for such a delay, but things have just been slightly crazy around our place with the Christmas season in full swing. This blogging idea is a lot harder to keep up with than either of us thought it would be.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a little bit about the recent changes in my life. Back on December 1, I started a new job. I now work for Benefit Trust Company which is located in Overland Park. I spent nearly three full years at State Street, but the long drive everyday and lack of a place for me to move up, pushed me to look elsewhere to advance my career. Benefit Trust actually purchased a division of State Street over the summer, and that is the group I work in. Three weeks in, and I am feeling really comfortable with what I am doing. The company is really small - only 30 employees or so - but I definitely feel welcomed and hope to be able to contribute a lot of good ideas. The best part of the job is the fact that it only takes me about 15-20 minutes to get here! That's less than half the drive I had before. :)

Jess and I promise to get some pics up of our Christmas decorations and gift opening activities in the very near future. We also want to wish all of you a merry Christmas, and we pray if you are traveling, that you are staying safe and warm!

-Jason

Happy Thanksgiving!

We want to start off by saying how truly thankful we are to be able to have so many wonderful people in our lives. Our friends and family mean the world to us, and we are very greatful to be able to spend the holidays with a few of them. We wish we could see you all, but obviously distance can make that difficult.

OK, enough mushy stuff...here's how our holiday really was. We went over to Jason's grandma's house in the early afternoon. Jason helped his uncle monitor the turkeys in the deep frier, and we nibble on some snacks and stuff for a few hours. We had our camera with us, but unfortunately we completely forgot to use it. Sorry grandma!

We headed out from there and went to Jess' grandparents' house. We had a TON of turkey and potatoes and other delicious things to eat. We were both stuffed! We set up their ping-pong table in the basement and had some pretty intense and extremely entertaining matches throughout the evening. Jess' cousin Dalton (who is 9) was really getting pretty good by the end of the night. (I think it may have been good coaching from his teammate...see pics below) :)

All in all we had a great time seeing our family members who live here in town. We sincerely hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well!

Jessica, Dalton, and Ashley

Mom and Grandaddy

Mom, Granmaggie, and Lisa

Ashley and Jess

Dalton and Jason (the best ping-pong duo)

A very intense match...

Christmas is closer than you might think...

We decided to take advantage of the beautiful day on Sunday and get a head start on the Christmas decorations. After the holidays last year, we stocked up on lots of outdoor lights, and since it will probably only get colder from here on out, we thought it would be a good idea to get the tough ones up before we had to be outside freezing our heines off! (no pun intended...ok maybe a little) It's hard to say who was more nervous - me (Jason), being 24 feet up in the air on the ladder - or Jessica, watching in fear from the ground. :) Jessica did put in her fair share of work though. She helped put all of the hooks on the lights so I could put them up as quickly as possible. If you're around, stop by and see our lights! They look very professional...if I do say so myself!

Mahaffie 10K and more...

Well, there certainly is nothing I could think of that would be more fun than running in a 10K race during the first week of November, when it's 25 degrees outside, and the wind is blowing about 15-20 mph. And so, that's just what we did yesterday morning! We ran in the Mahaffie 10K (and half marathon) race out here in Olathe. Although it was extremely cold, we managed to make it to the end...here's a few pics our parents took of us during the race. We really appreciated them being there to support us!

Later Saturday night we went over to Tyler and Lauren Cunningham's new home for a house warming party. We had a great time...we watched the KSU game (although it wasn't all that exciting), enjoyed wine, cheese, and crackers, and played a couple enthusiastically loud games of Catch Phrase! It was quite a day all together. Here's some shots from the party...

Better late than never...

Sorry for the delay. It seems that we aren't doing such a great job of updating this blog very much. We promise we will try harder! :-)

Not a lot has happened over the past week and a half or so, but we do have some pics to share.

Jason and his group at work had a little pumpkin carving contest with some of the other groups in his area. This was their entry. Pretty good huh? He brought it home to put out to scare the kids that came by on Halloween. We didn't have a bunch of trick-or-treaters, but that's good for us! We still have lots of Starburst and Skittles left for ourselves!

A couple quick pics of our girls...Ginger can't get enough play time...

...and Bella just can't get close enough to the camera!!

We did get to go over to Will and Kali Buchanan's house this past Saturday night for some fun activities. The guys all got in a few matches on the ping-pong table and everyone took part in an intense game of Clue!

Part of the group hanging out

Can you believe Jason had never played Clue before this?!

The Frenches thought they were sooo sneaky...too bad they were one round too late in figuring out who did it!!

We promise we won't wait this long to post again. We hope all of you out there are doing well and are enjoying life.

Last Weekend...

What do you think of when you think about how most 25-year-olds talk about how they spent their Saturday night? I would bet the first thing to pop in your mind wasn't a pumpkin carving party! We had a ton of fun and got to spend some time with our long time friends (the Frenches, the Buchanans), and some new friends (the Morascos), and take part in some Halloween activities. As you can see from the photos, we are really filled with school spirit even being nearly 3 years removed from K-State! Not to mention the fact that almost every sports team they have right now brings nothing but disappointment into our lives.

Everyone goes with cute and lovey (except us...)

Proud artists displaying their work!

Day One!

Hey everyone,

We are so excited to join the blogging world. The two of us have shared so many fantastic moments during our first two years + of marriage, and we wanted to start letting you (our friends and family) enjoy these things along with us. We are certainly new to this, so give us some time to get the hang of things. Hopefully we will start having lots of fun pics and stuff of places we go and people we see! That's it for now. Love ya.

-The Heine Family