OK, so I know we all have a good laugh when people come up with countless variations of our last name. Lots of people think it’s strange, but I try to assure them that while it may be uncommon in the US, it really is common in Crotia like a “Smith” or “Jones” in here (this is a wild assertion that I have just made up–it could be true, but I really don’t know). Anyway, Mom just sent us an article about the Permanent Representative of Crotia to the United Nations at Geneva. Guess what her last name is: MLADINEO. Even though this really doesn’t prove that Mladineo is popular, we’re making the circuits at the UN! :)

Now that I have some time on my hands, I wanted to update you on where we’ve been these last couple of weeks.

We went to Chelan Washington to celebrate the 4th of July with my family.  We had a blast soaking up rays, making smores (with Reeses), wakeboarding, boating, golfing, picking blueberries, and playing horseshoes and croquet.  Oh yeah, and Fernando beat Guitar Hero on Medium for the second time.  For the 4th, we stuck with the Jenkins tradition of making dutch oven peach cobbler and homemade ice cream and headed out on the boat to watch fireworks. Sadly the show wasn’t as good as previous years, but it was still fun to have someone to cuddle with.

Fernando golfing at Bear Mountain. We lost about 8 balls each but found around 30 more.

Our favorite shaved ice place

Wakeskating together for the first time. Notice I forgot to take my sunglasses off, although it just so happens that they are sitting in the bottom of a different lake.

Brianna and Ashley were ready in case we fell.

Kennewick Washington

We took a road trip to the Tri-Cities to go to Fernando’s friend’s wedding reception. It was my first time to any of the Tri-Cities, and I actually liked it a lot. While we were there, we got to see the Columbia River temple and we went boating on the Columbia/Snake River.

Columbia River Temple

The water was a bit chilly and green.

Houston

Our move went great. Thankfully everything arrived in one piece. The only complaint I have is that my car has some new scratches and the keys were lost. However, it was so nice not to have to lift any of the boxes.  It still took us several days to unpack our things. It didn’t take long to spend the remaining balances of our gift cards. There were necessities that we needed to get (like a shower curtain, trash can, and light bulbs).

We keep finding the Suman’s things in our boxes. Don’t worry, we have a Suman box waiting to be shipped back to Provo.

Ferd surprised me with these beautiful flowers after my first interview (which ended up being in Chinatown).

Exxon hooked us up with some tickets to the Astro’s game vs the Cubs. It was so great to have so many familiar faces from BYU working for Exxon. They closed the roof of the stadium to pump up the A/C. The Astro’s won in the bottom of the 9th. After the game, they had an amazing firework show.

Minute Maid Stadium (10 min from our apt)

Ok, so this post has taken a very long time to write and Ferd comes home from work in an hour and is going to ask what I’ve been up to all day… I gotta get used to being a housewife.

So, we’ve been MIA for that past month or so. It’s not that we don’t love our readers, but we just didn’t have access to our computer. We decided that it was time to move away from the college laptops and to upgrade to something fun and exciting…drumroll, please…we bought ourselves a new iMac!

Anyway, we’ve been w/o a computer for a couple weeks since we were on vacation with the family. Since moving to Houston, things have been crazy busy. I grossly underestimated the amount of time it would take to unpack (still not done). However, the whole process has been pretty fantastic and we’re very excited with all of our recent purchases. I’m still getting adjusted to this iMac and will post pictures once I find the cable for my camera. Apparently, Apple doesn’t believe in providing us with a SD card reader so I can’t pull any pics off the camera right now.

The Move – Tuesday

OK, this post will probably be a “short” summary, so it’s not super long to read. Early Tuesday morning, we checked into our apartment here in Houston. Just to refresh your memory, it’s called The Amalfi at Hermann Park. It was just a great day. After signing the lease, our movers showed up with all of our things from Utah. They had 4 guys working, so they were able to unload/unpack the truck in a mere 90 minutes. Right as they left, our second moving truck was on its way to drop off our bedroom set and dining room table. A few hours later, our cars were dropped off. Lastly, a Comcast salesman stopped by to hook up our cable TV (even though we didn’t own a TV at the time).

By the end of the day, we had unpacked a lot of things and felt like we were on track to finish by the end of the week. We ended up sleeping w/ our mattress on the ground because we couldn’t find my tools (hence, it was not possible to put the bed frame together. Well, that’s it for now, but we’ll write more soon! I have to get back to unpacking (rather than blogging).