PORTLANDIA

weirdest show on earth. we couldn't even make it through the first episode. why? it's officially official. we are moving to portland! 

and did i mention we will be moving at the end of this month? yes, crazy i know, but rob and i have been praying about this decision for a long time and we both feel very good and are very excited about this next big step in our lives. we didn't want to announce it until we were 110% sure that this is what we were going to do. robbie has accepted a job offer from a company called precoa. they are a company that partners with funeral homes and handles the pre-need insurance side of a funeral homes' business. in english, they basically meet with people and help them plan and pay for their funeral before they pass away so that their family is not having to figure all of that stuff out while they are also mourning the death of their loved one. funeral homes usually do not have the time, skills, or resources needed to grow this side of their business, so that is where precoa takes over. find out more about the company here. he will be working at the corporate office in the business strategy and development department and he is very excited!

robbie graduates this april from the marriott business school with a degree in business management with an entrepreneurship emphasis. i graduate this december in elementary education with a minor in teaching english language learners, but will be walking in april with robbie. because we are moving before i will officially graduate, i will complete my student teaching in portland this fall and i am very excited to graduate and become a teacher!

we are so grateful for our time that we have had in provo and will miss all of our friends and family dearly! we have been so blessed in our lives and marriage and we know that it has come from our faith and obedience in our Savior Jesus Christ and His church. we can't wait to see what portland has in store for us!

xoxo ashbie

p.s. want to know what's the absolute BEST part about moving to portland? almost every single housing complex is PET FRIENDLY!!!!! yup, that's right! meet alfred; alfie for short. we will soon be announcing our newest four legged member of our family and i know y'all can't wait to see the real picture of him (this is from pinterest, but he will look something like this. bow tie and all.) even the cat haters out there can't look at this photo and not think it's even a tiny bit cute. don't worry, i'm not asking you to admit it in public. but i know it's true. 

PUPPY LOVE

this weekend my little sister rachel rented a puppy for an hour! in provo, they have a business where they rent out puppies anywhere from 1-4 hours for $15 for the first hour and then $10 for each additional hour. this company rents out puppies in hopes to find a loving family to adopt them. this allows families to meet the puppies and see how the puppy acts around them and their environment before adopting them and finding out that it will not work out. a lot of students at byu will rent a puppy simply because it is not possible to own one themselves. its a funny but pretty neat business and we had the most fun hour with a blue heeler named miles! check out their website here.

also, it was a  b e a u t i f u l  day in provo! sunny and high 50s.

fairly good at playing fetch haha

 puppy kisses are the best!

 we had worn him out pretty good haha

such a fun afternoon with my little sis! thanks for sharing miles with us rach!

i didn't get any good pictures of robbie with miles but he even came too! (i know he secretly really wants a pet! hehe)

xoxo ashbie

GENERAL CONFERENCE WEEKEND

this past weekend was general conference weekend and we had the most wonderful time listening to modern day prophets give revelation from our loving Heavenly Father. if you didn't get a chance to listen, then you can watch, listen to, or download videos from the past two days here. we really are so blessed to be able to listen to our prophets from anywhere in the world, including our comfy couch--right where we were parked for the past two days! 

our weekend started on friday with a family dinner with rob's aunts, uncles, cousins and their kids. we all met up at sweet tomatoes in sandy and had the best time catching up. rob's aunt and uncle, who now live in germany, set it up and we were so grateful to be able to spend time with them while they were in town. i strategically placed myself at the end of the table where all the babies were. hehe. i even got to hold sweet isaac for a little bit! he was the sweetest baby and just stared at me the whole time with that look on his face saying, "who is that really smiley girl who is holding me?" rob and i got a kick out of how much hair this little guy had!

we also got to see sweet aspen! man has she grown up since we last saw her at elise and sam's wedding last september. she was squealing the whole time and just looking around at everyone and smiling her sweet smile! 

 l o v e this picture of both of them!

robbie honestly has one of the nicest families i have met. that is one of the million reasons why i love him so much! i am so blessed to have married him and to be able to call them family! we always enjoy any time that we get to spend with his family and send them all our love! we were so sad to say goodbye!

after dinner, we had a mission reunion to get to. they are always around general conference time. he actually had two that night, but dinner ran late so we missed the first one. they live in draper though so hopefully we can make it up there to visit them one of these days. robbie's other mission president--president and sister palmer--flew in from new zealand and so it was very special to be able to visit with them. i secretly love going to robbie's mission reunions, even though i can count on one hand the number of people i know, because i love to hear what his mission presidents say about him--that he was such an outstanding missionary and that i honestly and truly have an amazing husband who loves the Lord and shows that through his service in the church. of course, i already know this about robbie but i love any opportunity i get to brag about him or to hear other people brag about how awesome he is. i love this guy!

p.s. you're loving the long hair. i knew it. 

saturday was the start of general conference (i'm so lame and didn't take any pictures /: my bad). my two sisters and their boyfriends came over and we set up in our tiny living room to watch the two sessions. we enjoyed a huge and yummy breakfast of german pancakes, fruit, bacon, sausage, mini donuts, chocolate milk and any other food rachel could get from the creamery (; it was a wonderful day of conference and we were excited to hear two new temples announced in cedar city, utah and rio de janeiro, brazil! on sunday, rachel and zach came over for the morning session before heading to slc for the afternoon one. our favorite talk was given by elder l. whitney clayton about marriage. one of our favorite quotes from his talk: "marriage is a gift from God to us. the quality of our marriage is a gift from us to God." it was such an inspiring talk and rob and i are so grateful we made the decision to be married for time and all eternity last april! i am truly the happiest i have ever been and somehow each day just keeps getting better and better! i truly am the luckiest girl in the whole world! 

man, it has been such a wonderful weekend! if only school didn't have to continue tomorrow... (5 more days!)

xoxo, ashbie

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

just imagine this for a second. your husband wants to go on a mining trip with an old buddy to explore some old mines. you have a bad feeling about the trip but you don't want to be lame so you make him promise a thousand and one times that he will be safe and won't get hurt. he tells you that he will be back around 4 or 5 probably (left at 10 am) but no later than 6 or 7. he tells you if you haven't heard from me by then we are in this car at this mine. you go about your day, school conference in the morning, running errands with your sisters, going to the gym, you know-normal friday activities. you notice it is 6 pm and you haven't heard from your husband yet. you text him. no reply. you text him again 30 minutes later. no reply. you call him 15 minutes later. no answer. you text him again 20 minutes later. no reply. this continues until it is 8:45. you are worried sick and know that something is wrong. you jump in your car and start driving to the mines, having no clue what you will do once you get there. you drive 30 minutes and then FINALLY your phone rings. its rob. he tells me that they lost track of time and had no service to call and let me know. he is so sorry for making me worry about him and that they will be home in 45 minutes. it is now 9:15 p.m. i am so glad he is ok, but frustrated that he did not call me and blaming him for the premature gray hairs that are surely soon to reveal themselves. so to ease your worry, robbie's life was in no serious danger but i was worried to death about him (hence the near death experience). when he got home, however, i got the real story. in the words of the man himself...

 So... this is the man responsible for the near death experience of his lovely wife. That's right, me.. aka Robbie. I will now tell my experience with the mine and what really happened, as well as a little background on the mine we went to, etc.

 So the mine we went to is an old gold/silver/ore mine in Eureka, Utah. The town is an old mining town, known for the "big four" mines, one of which is the Centennial Mine. This is the mine that we went exploring in on Friday, as well as the mine that is responsible for giving Ashley a mini heart attack. No one had been in this mine at all in the last 10 years, until a few weeks ago when my friend Leavitt dug a hole underneath the metal bars that used to block the entrance to the mine.. the mine is now accessible, if you know exactly where to go and exactly where to look.

This was the first mine I have ever been in, so I didn't really know what to expect before hand. All I knew is that my friend Leavitt has been about 10 times in the past two or three months and hasn't died yet, so I'm probably pretty safe. So me, Leavitt, Leavitt's brother, and another one of their friends - a total of four of us - went mining.

When we got to the mine, we got our gloves, helmets, flashlights, and headlamps on. We crawled underneath the metal bars I mentioned, and walked for about half a mile until we got to a big system of ladders that went up and down. We decided to go up because that's where Leavitt wanted to continue his explorations (he had been in this mine about 4 or 5 times already), so up we climbed about 150 feet on old wooden ladders. When we got to the top, we hiked through the mine for about another mile. The pathway we walked on is basically where the old ore carts used to go. Most of the cart tracks were still in tact. In general, the size of the mine/hallway we were walking through was about 6-7 feet tall and probably 7-8 feet wide. Anyways, along our expedition through the mine, we saw a lot of cool things like 100 year old shovels, old blasting caps, sticks of dynamite, old liquor bottles, old tobacco cans, barrels filled with water (the barrels got filled by a system that filtered drips from the ceiling into the barrels), old ore carts (picture of me in it below), and a TON of really cool rocks. I'm sure we probably walked right past some fairly valuable minerals (possibly gold, silver, ore, etc.) but either didn't recognize them for what they were or couldn't see them because it was so dark in there. After about 2 hours of hiking through the mine, checking things out, and just exploring, we came to a big open cave/room that was bigger than any of our flashlight's beams could reach across. Basically, it was a giant huge opening inside the mine. We explored around there for about 30 minutes trying to see if it went anywhere else. No one found anything for a while, but eventually Leavitt came across a tiny tiny tiny opening (most of it was covered by rocks) that we could crawl through on our stomachs/knees. On the other side of this passage way were more mines! We went back about another 30 minutes, and came across another huge open room like the one we got to before, although not quite as big as the first one. We saw an opening where this one lead somewhere else. The only problem was that it was down a 100 foot shoot that required us to climb down really old sketchy/wet/unsturdy ladders and repel down ropes to get to the very bottom. We debated whether or not this was safe (it really wasn't safe at all, we just really wanted to see what was down there), and eventually we all made it down the 100 foot shoot. (what we didn't realize is that the tricky/almost impossible part would be climbing back up the 100 foot shoot to get out of the mine. Details on that will be given shortly..)

By this point, we had been in the mine for about 5 hours, although we didn't really know it... so we kept exploring further into the mine. About 30 minutes later we got to a dead end and decided to turn back because we looked at our phones and realized it was about 4:00. So back we went to the 100 foot shoot. 

Basically, this is almost impossible for me to describe what it was like and what we had to do to get out of this part of the mine. Without rope and without a climbing harness, we never would have gotten out (of course, we wouldn't have gone down there in the first place without the equipment, but still). To start, we had to climb a straight up and down 30 foot vertical rock face with no hand or footholds and only a harness and some rope. What this means is that we basically had to free climb a 30 foot wall, and every few feet pull out the slack on the rope so that if/when we slipped and fell we would only go down a few feet rather than all the way to the bottom. 

After the 30 foot vertical wall, there was another 25 foot wall that was almost as vertical as the other one, but not quite as precarious/unstable... and after the 25 foot wall, one final 20 foot wall to climb up with the harness/rope. All of these sections used to have ladders on them that the miners could climb up and down on, but over the years they have rotted away, fallen down, and don't exist anymore. After these first three sections are another three sections with ladders still in tact that we climbed up to finally get out of the 100 foot shoot. It was quite a beast...

It sounds pretty easy, but it was actually really hard and tiring. I was the second person to try to get up, and I couldn't do it very easily. I kept coughing (I've been sick for about two weeks with bad cough) and didn't have very much energy at this point, so I decided to let someone else try while I gathered my strength again. However, I was getting a little bit worried because it was like 5:00, only one person was up the 100 foot shoot, and if we weren't out by like 7 I knew ashley would start to get worried. Anyways, after a few close calls, some prayers, a lot of resting, and summoning all the strength we had, all four of us made it out of the 100 foot shoot. From there it was another 2 hour hike to get out of the mine. By the time we got out, it was 8:45.... almost two hours after I told ashley we would be done by at the latest haha. I knew she would be worried, but we didn't have cell reception inside the mountain, and the town the mine is in (eureka) also doesn't have cell reception. SO... I couldn't call her until about 20 minutes later when we were on the road and in the next town over. Of course, I felt really bad that she was so worried, but I was mostly just grateful that we made it out alive. I knew that we wouldn't have died in there because two of the guys got up the 100 foot shoot, and along the way some things happened to the walls, rope, and harness, etc. that made it harder for the last two of us to get up. So, if worst came to worst, they knew where we were and would not have left us stranded to die.

In the end, the thought crossed my mind once or twice that I might actually have to spend the night in the mine.. or something like that. There was one point where I really didn't think I was going to make it out that night, because my hand got caught in the rope and I didn't think I'd be able to climb with it very well after that. But, after resting and stuff we all made it out alive. 

Below are some pictures of the mine, 100 foot shoot, and other stuff... the pictures aren't very good because it was so dark and dusty in there, but it will give you a small idea of what it was like.


So this picture is towards the top of the 100 foot shoot. I am the one in the yellow helmet. I'm going down one of the ladders. As you can see, they are made of wood and basically nailed into the side of the mountain... it wasn't very sturdy, but it was sturdy enough! haha

Here I am again going down another section. The darkness you see behind me goes down to the bottom of the 100 foot abyss.

Here's a picture of some of the ropes we used to climb up and down.

This is taken from halfway down the 100 foot shoot. There is a kid in a white helmet who is one or two levels above me. I am at the very bottom in the yellow helmet, and you can barely see me. This gives you a little better idea of what we were climbing in and how vertical it was.

This is a picture of me in the mining cart!!!

This concludes Robbie's portion of the blog entry... in the end, it was a really cool experience that made me grateful for water, electricity, a comfortable bed, a car, and all the things we have every day that we take for granted. I am still a little bit sore from the climb/activity, but it was worth it!

Now, back to Ash!

never been so happy to see this guy.  

 he came home covered in dust from head to toe and his new gloves and helmet he had bought that morning came home with holes and tons of scratches. 

so when your husband tells you he wants to go explore some mines, make sure he knows what he's getting into!

xoxo ashbie 

photo cred for the photos taken from inside the mines goes to leavitt. thanks!

EASTER HAPPENINGS

easter is one of my favorite holidays. it has some of the best candy--jelly beans. robbie hates them and so that is why we are perfect for each other. 

after a wonderful afternoon of church, my two sisters and their boyfriends came over for dinner. we had three cheese stuffed shells (you can find the recipe here) with salad, rolls, and my sisters famous oatmeal white chocolate chip cookies. i love the time i get to spend with my sisters and i totally take it for granted that we live so close now. 

a quick pic of rob and i at church in our easter attire. (if you want one of those bow ties, you can find them here).

the bushes around our apartment decided to bloom for us! perfect timing.

pictures from the hunt. enjoy. ps i found the most eggs haha

 genius. pure genius. 

 all the men found the golden eggs... something is a little fishy here!

anyways, it was a perfect easter sunday filled with family, food, fun, and the sweet reminder of the sacrifice that Christ made for each of us. i thank my Heavenly Father every night for the wonderful life i have and the opportunity i have to repent and strive to live more like my Savior. if you want some inspiration read this talk by President Ezra Taft Benson called The Meaning of Easter. it's a good one, i promise. 

xoxo ashbie