I just feel like posting....

...which is not normal for me. It is a quiet Friday night. Kayleen is making baby hair bows with some friends for our little baby Jo. And I'm just chillin and enjoying not having as much homework as usual. Life is going good. I must say, though, that I am ready for school to be over and for graduation to be here.

On the other hand, I found out that it is going to cost me $45 to rent graduation robe, tassel, hood, etc. Anyone want to volunteer to pay that for me? That would be a wonderful graduation gift!

We have been enjoying the Olympics. We have become figure skating fanatics. We watched all 9 nights of figure skating. It was hard to get homework done.

We got callings in our new Church ward. Kayleen is working in the nursery. Since we are in a student ward there are like 2 kids in nursery. And 5 girls that are nursery workers. So it hasn't been too stressful for her. My new calling is to do Indexing online for the Census projects. So that is not stressful either. Hmmm, speaking of which, I have two batches I need to finish before tomorrow.

Kayleen made homemade bread! It is soooo yummy! She is so good to me.

Well, that is my rambling for now.

Next time: baby bows and pregnant Kayleen pictures.

Baby Girl Barlow

As most of you probably know, either by phone or Facebook, we are having a baby girl sometime around June 23rd! We had the ultrasound today and it was fun to see the baby. She was kicking the whole time! We are so very excited!!!!

We are having a hard time concentrating on school and work, but both are going well! I am loving my new job! I will try to post pictures of the baby room once we get it closer to being set up. We do already have a bookcase and the crib!

Boy or girl??

We find out on February 1st--comment and leave your guesses as to what gender our baby will be! Here are the guesses so far (some of these come from comments on Facebook):

People guessing BOY
Kayleen
Heidi Gardner
Megan Spencer Wells
Tonia Browner
Ron Janes
Marilee Cordery
Kyle Hutchings
Kirk Phillips
Hillary Dalton
Chris and Miriam Westover
Norine Barlow
Julie Ploharz
Deb Naatjes
Andrea Barney
Thomas McKnight

Brian Wells

Julie Poulson

People guessing GIRL
Jordan
Shaun and Lanette Nelson
Aldene Judd
Bethe Camp
Tricia Burke
Kara Ann Adams
Nate Holt
Megan Wallace
Sarah Walker
Alice Nuckols
Ashley Bills
Kirby Barlow
Andrea Barlow (?)

Jeremy Camp

Katie Shaw

People guessing one of each!
Laura Hild

Holiday activities

We are back in school now, but thought we'd tell about our adventures over the Christmas break. We went to Minnesota on the 19th of the December and got snowed in most of the time! We enjoyed playing games and watching movies and playing in the snow and spending time with Kayleen's family, especially our two adorable nieces, Halle and Sidney. Kayleen got to go maternity shopping with mom and sisters as well! The fam got some good pictures so I'll post them if I get them from Kayleen's fam. Here is one of Kayleen and Jake playing in the snow:

The week after Christmas we were back in Utah and played the whole time! We spent a lot of time sleeping in at home and finally being able to spend time together!

For New Year's we went to my aunt Alice's home to play games with some of the Camps. We were laughing the whole night--it was a lot of fun! New Year's Day we

helped Rebekah move into her cute new apartment in Sugar House, and Saturday the 2nd we hosted her's and Andrea's pre-birthday party! It was fun to have the whole family over and to play with nieces and nephews again!! We were excited to see the whole family again on Sunday for Tate's blessing in church. Here is the pic of our fam from my sister:

It was a GREAT Christmas break! Wish it could have been longer. Hope you all had a great break, too!

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.

Kayleen's pumpkin carving talent!!

Job, Halloween, Half-marathon, dancing, you name it!

Hello all! It is time for another JordiLeeny update! First of all, I have a new job! (Most of you probably already know this since almost everyone reading my blog also is connected to me on Facebook...) I start working part time with Squire & Co on January 11th. Then once I graduate I will work full-time! My first fulltime salary job! I am quite excited! I am very sad to be leaving the MTC, though. That has been a wonderful job. At Squire, my job will be "Small Business Advisor". Basically, I will be a consultant for small businesses who need to set up Accounting software and want advice about technology in their business. I think it will be really interesting work.

Next topic: Halloween! We had a dance test the night before Halloween so we had to dress up in formal clothes, but we decided to add a little Halloween spice to the mix. So I went with a ghost

theme (white tie) and Kayleen went with a bat theme (black and orange). It was fun.

On Halloween morning, we went to see Rebekah finish a Halloween Half-marathon. She ran all the way from Aspen Grove to the Shops at Riverwoods in Provo! WOW! I am very proud of my sister! She did very well and it was fun to go be her cheerleader. :) Love ya, Rebekah!

On Halloween night we hosted a party at our house, with lots of fun and friends! I still need to get the pics from others' cameras! Kayleen went as a bat, and I went as an orange hairy monster.

Tomorrow we are dancing in the Dancesport competition, so that might be my next blog topic! Stay tuned.....

Fall semester (aka "and we thought life couldn't get busier")

Sorry, no new pics to post. Haven't had time to even think about getting the camera out. We are SWAMPED with school this semester. Kayleen is not going to be working any more so that she can focus more on school. Which is good. But we are enjoying our classes. Especially our ballroom dance class. And we are staying healthy through our aerobics class (even though we always dread going because we are so tired!). But things are good. We had a wonderful general conference weekend, spent with our Provo family (aka Ron,Shaun,Lanette,Brian,Megan,Meg,Jason,Wells fam, etc.).
The big thing now is that I am job searching! That's right, change of plans. I had been planning on applying for schools this year to go on and get my PhD. But things aren't working out that way. We are staying longer in Utah (hooray! for my side of the family and all our friends) so that Kayleen can finish her degree with honors. (She is so smart!) So I'm looking at jobs in Utah or SL counties to pay the bills once I graduate in April. (FINALLY!) So far I've interviewed with Squire and Fast Enterprises. I'm hoping to interview for an IT position with the Church next week, and there are a few other places I'm considering.
We are so thankful for our family and our friends that support us so much. I'm sorry I'm not very good at keeping up with people, but we think about all of you all the time! We love you all!