Bracken & Talisha Jones

So.. It's been a year!

2011-01-11T19:30:00.028-07:00

So a lot has happened this last year. I don't even know where to begin? I guess I will try to sum it up into one post…

January – we went to a few Jazz games, did a lot of homework, and spent a little bit of time with family and friends.

February – was a little bit more exciting. We went to another Jazz game, stayed at the Smoot’s cabin and went snowmobiling, and went to Elite Academy #2 in Salt Lake City.

March - was very mellow. We didn’t do much. We played the Wii with some friends, went to a Jazz game with the Morrell’s, spoke in sacrament in our new ward, and helped my parents move into their new home!

April – was a great month. We got to play basketball at the Energy Solution’s Arena with Spencer and people from work. We also experienced a very intense hailstorm and lots of snow. Finals week was the third week of April, that was lovely as always. After finals we went down to Vegas with Bracken’s family for his cousin Brady’s wedding. That was a lot of fun; shopping and laying out in the sun! We are so excited to have Natalie in our family; she is so fun and cute!!

May – was pretty busy. First of all, we went on a CRUISE! That was a blast! We went with my family, the Womack’s (family friend), Grandma and Grandpa Simon, and the Jordan’s! We ported out of Florida and visited The Cayman Islands, Honduras, Belize, and Cozumel. It was amazing! I loved the islands, the sun, and the food! Also in May, my little Brother graduated from high school, got his mission call, and we spent Memorial Day weekend in St. George… with the Jordan’s.

June – was busy again. I went to summer school this semester. Yeah, I was crazy busy with homework. We attended Elite Academy #3 in Salt Lake, went through the temple with my brother, and hit the lake a few times.

July – not much went on it July, okay not much in the beginning of the month. Besides doing homework and working full time, we didn’t do much. Hung out with the family and went boating a few times. We managed to make it down to Lake Powell twice in a matter of two weeks. It was wonderful!! We went down with my family for 4 days and stayed in a house in Page. It was so much fun spending time with my mo

m, dad, and siblings. Cliff jumping, tubing, and laying out about sums it up.

Then we went back down 4 days later with Bracken’s family, and stayed on their houseboat for 5 days. That was a lot of fun as well. We went tubing, jet skiing, wakeboarding, and, of course… layed out a ton!!! We also watched movies and played cards.

Also this month, Bracken got to go up to Tacoma, Washington with his family to pick up Braiden from his mission. They had a great time visiting his mission and Bracken finally got to see his little brother after 4 years.

August – We went through the Logan Temple with Nate, Suni, & Ryann. We had an accident in our back yard. We were getting ready to go to a wedding and as we were putting the dogs in the back yard to leave, we noticed our tree was inside our sunroom. So we changed our clothes spent the night cutting down what was left of the tree. It was so sad and our yard is bare now. We also took a few couples up to the Jones’ condo and went boating at Pine View. That was a lot of fun.

One night after work we met both of our families at raging waters for family night, then ate at Winger’s for dinner. We also had Jadon’s farewell on his birthday. That was really neat. He had over 600 people at his farewell meeting.

September – starts my 9^th and final semester of college! Wow what a feeling!! We also took Jadon to the MTC. That was fun and not as emotional as I though it would be. It was a good feeling. Bracken finally put up a fence in our backyard for my dogs. We also celebrated Bracken’s birthday with some friends at Texas Road House and went to Wellsville for the Famous Founder’s Day Celebration and the buck-a-roo rodeo!

October – was pretty exciting! We hiked a mountain. It took is all day, but we did it. That was an amazing feeling.

We were hot and tired, but it was a neat experience. I also attended Elite Academy #3 in San Diego! That was a blast. I got to listen to some amazing stories and learn a lot from some really neat people. I left Bracken home this time and went with my mom, dad, and brother. I missed him a bunch, but it was fun. Halloween was a lot of fun. Bracken picked out our outfits! He even got to pick out two more wives that night. He was the luckiest husband at the party.

November – went by so fast. I had the opportunity to take the Marketing Club up to Park City to meet with Skull Candy and see the advertising department.

Thanksgiving was fun to see Bracken’s family that he hadn’t seen in forever. We spent the day down at his cousin’s house in Eagle Mountain. That was a lot of fun meeting the rest of the Jones’ family.

December – was my most favorite month this year. Besides celebrating my birthday, anniversary, and Christmas… I graduated from College!!! I now have my bachelors of science in Business Marketing. It was so much fun and a lot of hard work, but I made it! Thanks to all of the support of my family, and I was successful in fulfilling one of my childhood goals. I am happy to be done with school, now I just have to figure out what to do with my life. I guess I will help Bracken get through his last year of his bachelor’s and go from there.

This month was also full of lot’s of time with friends and family. We spent Christmas Eve with Bracken’s family and stayed the night at their house. Santa was very good to us this year! THANK YOU SANTA! We had a blast on Christmas morning with his family. We then traveled up to Logan to spend the afternoon and evening with my family. We opened a few more presents up there and played games. My dad surprised all the kids with iPads. That was a lot of fun and a huge surprise. We had such a good Christmas and are so grateful to have not just one, but TWO wonderful families like we do.

How is that for a year in review??? J

We had a great year and are looking forward to 2011. I am going to try to be better at this blogging business. Please forgive me for being such a slacker. More posts COMING SOON!!! Stay tuned…

Two month Update!

2009-12-13T21:58:00.012-07:00

Ok I am trying my hardest to get the hang of this blogging deal. Between school and work, I don’t know how many of you do this. Well I am happy to say this semester is over. It has been a long one, and definitely my hardest so far in college. Between finance, business calculus, and business law, I really struggled. I studied hard and put a lot of time and effort into study groups and homework, and the stress and work paid off! I passed all five of my classes. I know this doesn’t sound like a big accomplishment, because for the most part college is not hard for most people, but I struggled with my grades this semester. So I am happy I passed them all! And now that school is over I have some time to update my blog.

I will start off with Cami’s wedding! It was so much fun! I love weddings so much, especially this one. On November 21^st Cami and Alex were sealed in the Logan Temple. Bracken and I were able to go up there and be apart of their sealing and their special day! I am so grateful for that opportunity. It was so neat to watch two of my very best friends be sealed for time and all eternity. We have pretty much grown up together, it was always us girls and the guys. And they were all there. It was so neat, I cried! Ok, I bawled.. It was just so sweet and so special. The rest of the day was so much fun too. The luncheon, reception, pictures, dance, food, I loved it all. It was also fun to see my little Haylie and her hubby Jarett! I miss them so much! They still live in New Jersey right now, so it was fun spending the day with them. Bracken and Jar really bonded ;) haha. Cami looked so beautiful, she was such a pretty bride. I am just so happy for them and glad we could be apart of their special day.

We also took our family pictures with my family this month. That was a lot of fun, well not for the boys, but I enjoyed it.

Now December: The second week of December is always going to be a busy one for us, especially Bracken. He did a great job this year though. The first part of the week we both had finals, then Wednesday the 9^th was my birthday, and Saturday the 12^th was our anniversary. He really spoiled me. First on Sunday we celebrated my birthday with both of our families down here at his parents house. That was a lot of fun, and so good to have everyone together. I got some really fun things too. Then Wednesday morning I woke up to a wonderful surprise. Bracken woke up super early and made me breakfast in bed. Not just any breakfast either, he cooked shrimp and marinated chicken the night before. I had no idea! He knows I am not a huge fan of breakfast food, and I LOVE shrimp! It was awesome. He also made me a birthday cake that morning, all before we left for work at 7:30. He kept asking me when I wanted to open my presents from him, and I kept saying Thursday after my final. I was so stressed the week of finals I didn’t want to think about anything else until I was finished and knew I passed. So Bracken surprised me with my presents that morning too, he was too excited to wait. And now I know why, he gave me an iPod touch, which was such a big and great surprise! I have wanted one for so long and didn’t expect to get one yet. I was just going to look around for a while and look for a good deal, then think about buying one. But Bracken is so sweet, he found one for me and really surprised me. I could not believe it, but am so happy! He is the best husband ever, just so thoughtful and so much better than me at giving gifts.

Bracken also did a great job making our anniversary so amazing. He told me we were going up to Logan to go to the temple and then out to dinner, but wouldn’t say what we were doing after that (he wanted to surprise me again). So we made it up there around 3:30pm through a huge snowstorm. The roads were so bad, especially through the canyon, but we were able to test out our new car J. As we were parking and getting out to go into the temple I realized I didn’t have my recommend. I usually keep it in my wallet, but had taken it out to go to Cami’s wedding. I was about to cry, because I thought we were not going to be able to go in. But we found out they can look up my record in their system and they actually called our stake president to see if it was valid. It was so fun to go back to the place where we were sealed together one year ago. The session was so awesome and brought back so many memories. Having all of our family and closest friends there with us last year was so amazing and special. I am so grateful for the temple and the opportunity we have to have them so close and convenient and for the blessings we can receive from attending them. After the temple he took me to Olive Garden! That was an experience in it self. The service was way bad, our drinks were completely empty, it took a half hour to get our salad and breadsticks, and 30 seconds after that we got our food. It was just terrible, and we couldn’t figure out why our waitress was so slow and why we hadn’t seen her in like 25 minutes. Then the manager comes over to us to check on our drinks so we asked him what’s up. We were not trying to complain, we just wanted to figure out why she was so slow on our table. I guess some of her food was dropped on a previous table and that put her behind. It was understandable and we were not rude or anything. Then we told him that we were there to celebrate our first anniversary and just wanted to have a nice dinner together. He said well thank you for choosing Olive Garden, choose a dessert of your choice, and I will let your server know. So that was very nice of him, then unexpectedly he comes back ten minutes later to check on us and says well I have not bought very many people’s dinner today, let me buy your dinner. I tried to tell him that wasn’t necessary, but got cut off by Bracken saying okay, thank you so much! Haha, so that was a very nice treat! After dinner Bracken asked where I wanted to stay the night, he let me choose between the Best Western, Econolodge, and Anniversary Inn. I really didn’t care, but he was teasing me because he had already booked a room at the Anniversary Inn. It was so fun, we stayed in the Lake Powell room. I wanted to go somewhere warm for our anniversary so that was as close to warm as we could get this year. The night was very fun and romantic, but I will spare you the details. Everything was perfect, but later in the night I got way sick, it almost felt like food poisoning. That lasted a few hours, I was miserable, but was able to fall asleep around 2, and woke up just fine. The whole weekend turned out so perfect and Bracken did it all. He is the most amazing guy I know! He is so good at surprises and making every date or special event even more special. I love him so much! Thanks for an awesome weekend babe!!

My first post!

2009-10-25T13:43:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I guess I will finally post something new on my blog. I have not done one thing with is since I think July when Angie helped me set it up. (Thanks Ang) So here goes my first post ever. I am a little scared of this whole blogging thing, lol I dont really know how to work any of it, so please be patient with me. Thanks!!

Well I guess the biggest news we have is our loan on our house finally went through on Sept. 24 and we were able to start working on it the next day. We tore down wall paper from every room, tiled the kitchen, upstairs bathroom, and entry way, and we painted every room except for the laundry room and downstairs bathroom. It really doesn't sound like much, but it was!!! We had a ton of help from our wonderful families, so it all went by actually pretty quick. We moved in on Oct. 7th with the help of Lloyd and Kalen! This has been so much fun setting up and decorating our first home! And so super excited to finally have Zoey living with us! She loves it too!

Our house is in Kaysville, just two blocks east of the 7 Eleven on 200 N, so anyone is welcome to stop by and visit anytime. We are both so grateful to have this house and want to thank everyone who helped us with it. Jill Lodder, what a great realestate agent!! Spencer, Tyra, Marcell, Lisa has helped us with so much and are the best parents in the world. Also our wonderful siblings, thank you for your help!!

Here are a little before and after shots of the house!

Love the blue wallpaper