congrats, bf!!

today is a big day for my little fiance...

he's getting promoted!!

i attached a picture for those of us who don't understand unless a picture or graph is shown.

so at boot camp, the recruits have to do the crucible.

when/if they finish the crucible, they are announced marines!

usually when they graduate from boot camp, they graduate as Privates.

since jon has a certain amount of college credits and is an eagle scout, he graduated as a Private First Class.

well, tomorrow he is getting promoted to Lance Corporal!

aka E-3.

if they do the regular promotion ceremony, they pin the new chevron and cross rifle pin onto his shirt without a back to the pin. they pat it down twice into his skin.

(he said that he will have layers on, so it won't penetrate his flesh...we'll see.)

i just wanted to tell the world because i am SO proud of him!!

and i love him so much!

so maybe you can congratulate him in your free time.

love you baybay.

ps. jon is asleep so he couldn't proof read this for me. 
all my marine facts are probably all wrong. sorry!:)

keep calm.

"This poster was initially produced by the Ministry of Information in 1939 during the beginning of World War II and was intended as a "last case scenario" to be used only should the Nazis succeed in invading Great Britain, in order to stiffen resolve. Two and a half million copies were printed, although the poster was distributed only in limited numbers. The designer of the poster is unknown.

"Its message has also been felt relevant to the late-2000s recession. Merchandise with the image has been ordered in bulk by American financial firms, advertising agencies, and by Germans. It has appeared on the walls of places as diverse as the prime minister's strategy unit at 10 Downing Street, the Lord Chamberlain's office and Buckingham's palace and the United States Embassy in Belgium."

I've seen this poster a million times, but I just found out the history behind it, and I love.

today i...

woke up late again. wondered when that trend was going to stop.

became very upset about having a head ache AND stomach ache.
i then realized that i could just not HAVE a head. OR a stomach.
then i felt bad for being upset and apologized to God.
but i'm still wondering what blessing is going to come out of me being sick 24/7.

went on a house call for a client with my internship.

i am so excited about this whole interior design thing.

more on that later.

more and more and more.

remembered while i was working how my alarm woke robbie up at 4 a.m. and when i looked at him on the floor, he was sitting with his feet on the floor and his bum on the 'mattress' looking so tired and confused. laughed hard. didn't tell anyone about it so they wondered why i was laughing...

surfed the web for hours and day dreamed about our wedding.

i'm so excited for it to be poorly planned.

the cd might be scratched and not have enough songs on it,

my hair might be flat and my lipstick smudged,

and only 3 people might come.

but it will be the happiest day of my life,

and i don't care if the flowers don't match my shoes

and the sign in book isn't creative enough.

i'll be there with my husband, oblivious to everything around me.

and thats all i can ask for.

i just want a photographer there to catch the magic.

what a day.

5:23 a.m.

woke up and looked at my phone. JUMPED out of bed and said/yelled to the cat-

"It's 5:30. YIKES!"

brushed my teeth, grabbed my makeup, put on clothes, left the house.

5:40 a.m.

walked into work happy that there is a 5 a.m. class next door with a teacher that unlocks my door for me. so that there is never anyone waiting for me to get there, no matter how late i am.

9:30 a.m.

blushed when the hot old guy came in for the first time in over a week. he threw me a wink, pointed a gun made out of his hand at me and said "Mornin' Alex."

swoooon.

10 a.m.

made my manager laugh long enough that he waved my sweeping and mopping chore,
yesssssss.

12 p.m.

got off work. came home to find the CUTEST design blogs!

such as this.

it makes me so excited for our house/condo/apartment!!

we're going to have the fetchest little antique/Scandinavian home EVAR!

example a.-

notice the little yellow kids ghost chair by philippe starck on the left.

and no i didn't need to look up what kind of chair that is, i learned it in school.

i love my degree.

example b.-

currently loving white floors.

and antique pieces, hello.

example c.-

who would have thought?

2 p.m.

gym.
stair master will. eventually kill me.

5 p.m.

went to sisters to get a have dinner, get a hair cut, reregister at target

(jon and i registered over christmas break while he was here.
the shelves were. EMPTY. so we just registered for whatever was there.
katie and i went yesterday to fix our mistakes,
it was so nice having a woman with experience there!
christmas 2010, her and sam will be registered at target as well, haha.),
and finally

10 p.m.

sleeeeeep.

january 21.

today was a really fun, busy day.

i started my internship at Marilyn Lewis Interior Design.

i love it already, even though it really reminds me of working for my boss in new york.

she was really excited to hear that i was engaged, very intrigued at the fact that i dont have my ears pierced and looked me up and down right when i met her for like 15 obvious seconds.

it was so great, old frazzled ladies are so much fun. this is going to be interesting.

picture of the day:

little robbie in the morning.

i slept at katie's last night, and robbie slept next to my bed on the floor.

he didnt even budge when jon called me, and my 12 alarms went off in the morning at 4 am. he is so cute.

its terrible quality because the lights were off.

his hand is behind his head.

a picture a day.

or just enough pictures to describe my day.

promotion at work.

i wont be working there very long if we get married in may,

but i can't imagine Front Desk Manager looking bad on my resume.

:)

hilarious granny in the shirt jon gave her for christmas.

proud grandma of a united states marine.

www.alexandrahagerman.blogspot.com

i'm changing my blog name/URL.

i don't know what this means for your google reader and side bar on blogspot, so i'm letting you know before hand so that you can change it.

i'm going to change it on saturday.

i don't know if it'll redirect you.

if you try going to my blog and it says there is no such thing, my new blog is

www.alexandrahagerman.blogspot.com

(alexandrarobinson.blogspot.com was taken even though she DOESNT use it....makes me very mad...)

i know its a bit premature, but i figure its better to change it to hagerman now so that i wont have to change it again later.

and i want to change it FROM new york now.

even though it makes me sad.

but new beginnings! and i will have a cute blog soon.

(right amanda?????)

thank you for your cooperation:)

DIY serving platters.

katie and I had a fun day yesterday. i picked her up at noon to go to orem to try on my wedding dress (eep!!). we got there and they didnt HAVE my wedding dress. even though they'd called me the day before reminding me of my fitting the next day. now i'm not quite sure what that says about their business, but it made me very upset. why call me to remind me of my fitting if my dress wont even be there the next day for me to FIT into??

anyway. good thing we were in orem because i

posted these rings on craig's list and someone in orem wanted to buy one. so we met up with him and he bought it for $60 dollars!!

*I have two more. if you are interested, they are mens size 11 carbon fiber rings. they are really cool and really good looking. i'm trying to sell them on ksl and craig's list for $100, but i'll sell them to my blog readers (ha..) for $55. spread the word, eh??

after i made money, we went back up to salt lake to a bead store. katie is super crafty and loves making supercute binki chains for babies and she had to get supplies there.

after that, we went to the D.I.

her friends at church told her about this fun project that we decided to do.

we were mostly going to just get the supplies so that we could go to the activity and do the project with all the other girls, but we wanted immediate gratification so we bought the supplies and glue and put them together last night...

this is what i bought at the D.I.

-a really cute vase.

-2 picture frames.

-a small cup/vase

looking thing.

-two small plates.

-two large plates.

-a china set. includes big plate, small plate, and small bowl for four settings. its so nice and it had all the pieces! so excited for our new apartment/house!

all of this.....for only...

$16.50.

katie got TONS of stuff as well, and only spent $12.50!!

we were so excited and we both left the d.i. with SO many bags in our hands!!

thats a first!!

after the D.I. we had to run home and save sam from the children, haha.

then we left again and went straight to ikea (our favorite place to shop.)

katie returned over $100 worth of merchandise (the lady was really happy about it)

and then we ate dinner.

dinner and dessert with a drink to share for both of us at ikea was $4, ps.

we walked around ikea and looked for glasses to use for our project. they did have a lot of options, but nothing like what we were looking for.

katie ended up buying a three dollar pillow case for her one dollar pillow and a candy bar for us to share, then we spedsped to HobbyLobby to look for glue for the project, and ribbon for katie's binki chain she's making.

well, we got there 3 minutes before it closed and it didnt have glue.

so we ran to home depot where we found some! just what we needed.

after home depot, we went to the dollar store.

we found a cup for me to use on my project!!

then we went home to rest.

whoops, spoke too soon.

we were going to make brownies, and i needed to make brownies for sunday dinner today, so we had to get back in the car and head to ream's for brownies and chocolate chips.

we also tried getting a red box movie but didn't since none of our codes worked.

(pay $1?...seriously?)

this time we really did make it home. boy was audrey happy to get out of her carseat for the first time in 3 hours!!

katie has recently been raving about having bean brownies. instead of using eggs, water, and vegetable oil, you get a can of beans and take all the water out, put them in a blender until they're creamy and add them to the brownie batter. so she made those while i made my platter.

well 1.5 hours later, we finally took the brownies out. they really did need to be in there that long...wellll almost that long. sam decided to get the CHEAPEST brownies he could find and we could tell when we tried them.

they.

were.

awful.

it was sad because katie wanted me to try the bean brownies, she's had them before and she said you can't even tell a difference!

*also, if you use beans instead of eggs, water, and vegetable oil, the brownies cost LESS weight watchers points. !!

after the brownies, katie put her platter together!

it was altogether a successful and FULL day and night!

our platters turned out really cute! they were really cheap

(we probably used more money on gas running all around then on the supplies themselves)

this is a side view. the bottom cup is upside down, and the middle cup is right side up.

(parfait dishes work better and look cuter, we found)

i am making two for jon and i. i did my NOT as cute plates first in case i messed up.

katie's plates are supercute and both from the D.I.

they are different brands from different plate sets. and they look AWESOME together!

here is the top view.

try it out! it was really easy, and they turned out cute.

Epoxy glue is what we used, BTW.

enjoy!

break down of the cost-

big plate-.75 cents at d.i.

little plate- .75 cents at d.i.

bottom cup-1.00 at d.i.

middle cup-1.00 at dollar tree

epoxy glue-5.00 dollars at home depot

(you can probably put 2.5 platters with one thing of glue,

we put both of ours together and had some glue left over)

Miramar, California.

news is out.

Jon is getting stationed in Miramar, California.

(Top Gun. Ever heard of it??)

i havent. but i heard its a great movie.

Let "me" tell you a bit about Miramar...

little chapel on base.

Mission statement-

"To provide religious ministry support to the Marines, Sailors and family members of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar and 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing by enabling them to accomplish their mission and objectives as spiritually fit warriors."

"Marine Corps Air Station Miramar is situated just outside of San Diego and gets the beautiful weather year round. This is a small military base, but it is surrounded by beautiful homes and lots of shopping. You are right in the midst of three great communities: La Jolla, Poway and San Diego. All three cities are approximately 15 minutes away, so there is much to do at your fingertips. (Amanda Marie is only about 2 hours away. Better than 10, yes?)

This base is very intimate(uh) and easy to get to know. There's a great opportunity to meet friends and build a good support system. This base is easy to get around and much of it has been remodeled.

Almost all of the base housing has been remodeled or is currently in the works. Living in a neighborhood on base is great! The housing on base is nice, utilities are free and friends are right next door. We have a lot of pools on the Marine Corps base here and my activities are hosted as well. It is much easier to make friends when you live on base and have each other to lean on when your spouse gets deployed. If you don't live on base, there are some great options out in town. Keep in mind that you will be responsible for your own utilities and you lose out on the military community."

Most of the time you hear that military housing is sucky...

and that may be the case, but not here!

every time jon tells a fellow marine he's getting stationed there,

they tell him how nice it is.

"Nicest Marine Corps base in America!"

(we'll see.)

There is a theater, 18 hole golf course, tons of pools, SHOPPING,

fitness clubs, wives clubs, restaurants, bars, cafe's, museums and can I forget?

the Mirarmar Air Show.

being on base is a crazy feeling.

hours are listed military time (obviously)

there are men and women at grocery stores, 'malls', salons, etcetcetc in uniform. so weird.

no tax.

its like a gated community! you need your military id, or possibly drivers license to get on base.

you need to have a military id to buy anything in most of the stores.

everything is cheap.

ie: the new iMac's are only 1600 american dollars at camp lejeune.

I am so excited.

we prayed and prayed and prayed that he would get stationed in california.

Heavenly Father answered our prayers.

I dont know what we are doing right, but we've been sooo blessed through all of this. I've seen jon once a month since he graduated boot camp.

that is so uncommon.

we're so happy with how things have been happening,

and i am so so GRATEFUL.

Jon has leave feb 4th-feb 14th! so he'll be in town for some of that, and if they let him take his truck to CA, we'll be driving it out there that week! hopefully by then we will know if we can get married on May 11th, but its looking good so far.

knock on wood.

p.s. sorry for the funny pictures. they don't have very many pictures of the base online.

p.p.s. you don't have to go to church at that chapel.

there isn't an LDS service on base, but we'll be in a ward off base.

i want our own house.

off base.

so that i can paint our walls black.

i love it.

orders.

jon graduates february 4th.

after he graduates, he'll be stationed somewhere.

he will live there until he gets deployed. when he gets back from deployment, he'll live there again. he will live there until they tell him otherwise.

tomorrow, he gets his orders.

telling him WHERE he will be stationed,

aka where we will live.

and once he knows where he will be stationed, he can call them and talk to them about when they think jon will get shipped out for deployment.

and depending on what they say...decides when we can get married.

either way, i'll be living there with him at some point.

but keep your fingers crossed that it will be in may.

after they let us get married.

pleaseeee say we can get married in may.

i'm sick of living without this boy:)

so keep us in your prayers, if you have time to pray about something so seemingly insignificant.