HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Dear Family and Friends,
Happy Holidays!! I hope you have been enjoying your holiday season so far. This has been a very fun Christmas for me and Kayleen. We went to Minnesota for a little over a week to spend time with Kayleen’s family. We had a lot of fun out there and it was good to see the family that we hadn’t seen since August.
We just moved into a new apartment in Provo and I am finishing school next semester. I’ll be happy to graduate from BYU, but I will miss it a lot, too. I will be graduating with both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Information Systems Management. We will still be around at BYU for another year and a half for Kayleen to finish. She is studying English and plans to graduate with her bachelor’s degree in 2011.
I have been working at the MTC for the last year and a half, but will be quitting in January to start my new job with Squire & Co in Orem. They offered me a full time position for after graduation, but I will be working with them part time from January to April while I am completing my last semester of school. My job will be consulting on technology and accounting for small businesses in Utah and Salt Lake counties. Right now Kayleen’s job is focusing full time on school, though this year she worked for a while at Canyon Crest Elementary School as a teacher’s aide.
The big news to share with you this Christmas is that we are going to have our first child next summer!! (yes, consider this the official announcement J) The due date is June 23rd, and we plan to find out the gender of the baby at the beginning of February. We both want a boy but also both have a feeling it is a girl. Either way we’ll be happy! We are very excited to welcome a new addition to the Barlow family!
We hope you have a wonderful holiday season. We love you all very much and hope we will be able to see you soon.
With Love,
Jordan and Kayleen

P.S. Moms are the best for holidays

I just posted about Thanksgiving and our move, but neither of those would have gone nearly as well without the help of my wonderful mom. She helped get the Thanksgiving dinner ready, did our dishes, helped us pack, cleaned a lot of our old apartment out, bought us meals during the hectic move, helped move stuff, helped get our bedroom set up after moving in, gave us a generous holiday present, etc, etc. Thanks for making this Thanksgiving weekend go so amazingly well! You are the best, Mom!

Now we are also excited to be in Minnesota with Kayleen's mom and family over Christmas. Every time we spend time with her she always spoils us, too! Miss you and excited to see you soon, Mary!

Moms are the best.

November's come and gone

DANCESPORT

Well, last time I promised to write about Dancesport but I must admit I wasn't too excited after we didn't do too well. We danced in two rounds (out of 9) but we had a lot of fun. It was fun to watch the professional ballroom dancers and see all the competitions among various ages. It was a good time. We didn't get very good pictures (of course) but here is one.

THANKSGIVING

This year we did Thanksgiving at our apartment. It was the smallest Thanksgiving I've ever had, but one of the most enjoyable. It was nice to just stay at home and have family and friends over. We made the turkey, potatoes, and jello, and everyone else brought the rest. We had Mom, Andrea, and Rebekah over, as well as friends Ron, Tricia, and Jason.

Of course I didn't get pictures. I have been just getting worse at remembering to take pictures.

Of course with it being Thanksgiving, I have to stop and write about how thankful I am for all the many blessings we have. My mom was so helpful on Thanksgiving and made it so easy for us to host! I am so thankful for her, as well as our other family. I am thankful for my siblings, and for my in-laws. We have such good family on both sides! We are thankful for kind and supportive friends as well. We are thankful for my good student job as well as my new job coming up. We are thankful to be able to attend such a wonderful university and get such a high-quality education (and thankful for the low price of tuition!). We are thankful for our new apartment. We are thankful to have enough to eat and to not have to worry about financial stress.

Most of all we are thankful for the blessings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for His atonement for us.

NEW APARTMENT

For this topic, again no pictures, but pictures will come once we get everything put away. Then again, maybe I'll just not post pictures so you have to come visit and see it in person! Anyway, we moved yesterday, Nov 30th, to a new apartment in Provo. It is just a couple of miles from where we were, but it is nicer, bigger, cheaper, and in a better neighborhood! We are really excited about it. Last night we slept well even without all the noises we got used to over the last year -- dripping faucet, strange noises from the radiator, and train two blocks away. (now you can think about coming to visit and staying at our apartment again, Mary :)

We were so incredibly blessed to have so many people help us move. There were about 25 people there, between friends and family and mostly people from our ward at Church. Thank you all so very much! It was so good to have it done so quickly. The packing and unpacking took/takes longer, but actually moving everything from one apartment to the other took less than 1 1/2 hours. It was amazing.