Our New Home!!!

So here's a tour of our home! For some reason it's not letting me upload what the outside looks like. When you first walk in the front door this is what you see.

If you turn into the door way on your left, it's our front living area.

Now if you turn right out of this room it's our dining room/piano teaching area. i was so happy my piano made it all the way here!!

Walk straight to go into the kitchen and we have a very small kitchen. All the counter space you see in the picture is all the counter space we have. Luckily, on the other side of the fridge is a big pantry!!

Go back to the stairs when you first walk in. Go up the stairs and we have a very small bathroom that gets extremely hot and humid.

Turn left at the top of the stairs and then the three bedrooms come. The first one is a small one that I'm going to use as my "craft" room. The next one is Collin's "office"/studying room. Lastly is our bedroom with a big enough closet that we can both use. 

Collin is already studying on the second day of school!!! Good job honey!!!

We also have a basement for our washer and dryer and an attic that we use for storage. That's all! We love it and are so happy to be in Iowa! Our ward is fantastic and we've already made lots of new friends!!!

Moving Time!!!

Saying goodbye was not fun at all!!! I got a blessing before we left that told me to be strong so that's what I had to keep reminding myself of. I did better after I had that. We left for Iowa on July 1. Collin and his brother Rhees drove the Accord, my mom and I drove the Civic, and Collin's Parents drove their truck pulling the trailer. We did it in two days. It's normally an 18 hour drive but it took us a little longer because of the trailer, even though it did fine most of the way. We stopped in North Platte, Nebraska the first day and had AMAZING Mexican food. It really was so good! The next day we drove the rest of the way to Davenport, Iowa. We were hoping to be able to get into our apartment that night and then unload the next day, but our landlord said it wouldn't be ready until the next day. Luckily she did let us sleep in another of her apartments that was vacant. We all slept on the floor, but we didn't have to pay so that's all that mattered!
The next day (Wednesday) was stressful. We had to wait until noon for the apartment to be ready so we went to the John Deere Tractor Museum in the morning. Then when we got the phonecall from the landlord saying we could move in, we realized we forgot to pull out our security deposit for the house so we were scrambling to get that before we could move in. We finally figured it out and were able to get the keys and move in. We had tons of help from the ward and had it done in no time. My piano made it!!!! I was so worried about it the whole drive! We had almost everything unpacked the first day. I was feeling so bad that my in-laws and Rhees were going to have to drive home on the Fourth of July, but Davenport had their fireworks the day before so we went to those. They shot off from a bridge that went over the Mississippi River. It was cool, but would have been cooler if we were closer.
The next day the Cragun's left to go home. They left early in the morning. I had just barely woken up so I was too out of it to show any emotion. I would have been a mess if I had really been awake. My mom stayed until Sunday to help us finish unpacking. That was super helpful. If she hadn't we probably would still be unpacking. We even have all but one picture hung/placed. Since we got everything done quickly, we went to Nauvoo and Carthage on Saturday. We saw Carthage Jail, went to the Nauvoo Temple, Brickyard, Red Brick House, Trail of Hope, Visitors Center and saw two plays/musicals, and Brigham Young's home. It was so cool!! The Nauvoo Pageant didn't start til the following Tuesday, but they had a dress rehearsal the night we were there that we were able to stay and watch! It was so amazing! Not quite as good as Easter Pageant (Collin says I'm biased), but still super great! Dropping my mom off at the airport on Sunday was not easy at all!

Collin's Dad, Scott Cragun

Fireworks

This was the window Joseph fell out of when we was shot.

You can see the bullet holes from the men trying to shoot through the door. 

This is a gorgeous but plain and simple temple!

I love how you can see the real Nauvoo Temple lit up.

Jean-Pierre Stall'e was one of my ancestors. He was listed on a wall along with hundreds others who died crossing the plains.

Pre-Move

So between my graduation and when we moved not a whole lot happened. Collin posted about going to the Manti temple and his trip to NY for work. Pretty much the only other thing we did was go to Bear Lake one final time before moving. It was so much fun. One night Collin and I went on a walk on the beach and I kinda had a melt down. I started thinking about moving and missing all of our family back at home. Luckily I have a fantastic husband that took care of me when I was sad and reminded me that we can come home and visit and talk on the phone and skype and pretty much still keep in contact. We just won't be able to watch our nieces and nephews grow. We were at Bear Lake for a whole week along with Chet and Abby and their kids, and Rhees and Celeste. Collin's parents and Tiffy and Mike and their kids had to go home early. We also had no boat so that was a little disappointing, but not too bad. Chet and Abby brought up a canoe that we all had fun with. Collin and I even saw a otter/beaver/water-squirrel-type-thing when we were out on the canoe. We had so many laughs late at night playing games. We also FINALLY found us a place to live in Iowa while we were up there. It was kinda stressful at first, but it all worked out thankfully. We also celebrated my birthday.
As soon as we got back from Bear Lake I had a week to pack up our apartment before we had to be out. Thankfully I had TONS of help packing up. My mom, Katie, Abby, Tiffy, and Kaden all came to help me pack up. I had everything packed up Thursday and we weren't moving until Saturday. Saturday when we moved out we had some help from the ward and we had everything out of the apartment in less than 2 hours. We had a trailer we were borrowing from Collin's cousin to haul everything to Iowa. Collin and his brothers loaded everything into the trailer and it all sat in the trailer (including my piano) for a little over 2 weeks. We stayed with my in-laws until we moved.
Father's Day ended up working out great. My in-laws were out of town for Father's Day so we were able to spend the whole day with my Dad. Then the next day we did the Cragun Father's Day.
Life at the Cragun home was pretty fun. My in-laws were having a waterfall being built in their backyard so that was fun to watch. Playing games with the nieces and nephews was also fun. Collin and I watched Chet and Abby's kids so they could go to the temple. We also had a girls night making Pinterest food and crafts and then watched Gone with the Wind. We went and saw a bunch of people before leaving. The last week in Utah was so busy it went SO fast.

We could have stayed there forever!

We had to go to the Draper Temple before leaving

A very hard goodbye for me! My eyes are all red from crying.

We've had an eventful few months. Stefani had her senior recital and graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Piano Pedagogy (piano teaching) We don't have any pictures of her senior recital but we have a CD for anyone who wants it.

I have been working hard building trampoline parks all over the country and some outside the country. I got to go on an install in New York. I got to go see Times Square, Central Park and ride the amazing subway. We ate at Carnegie Deli, they had the BEST cheesecake I've ever had. 

We went to the Manti temple with Stef's parents and had an awesome time. It was a beautiful temple and we had a good endowment session.

 We are still working on finding a place to live in Davenport,IA. We are going to be moving sometime during the end of June. 

Here's a few random pictures of our life!

Our romantic candlelit dinner! Yes that is my wedding bouquet in the vase!

We had our super delicious Alfredo! 

We made these yummy sugar cookies for Valentine's Day!

We did not have a heart cookie cutter so we used a cup and a knife! 

Spring Break part 2

We had to wake up super early in the morning to get to the airport. We were flying standby and we had to be in California the next day for the Music Teachers National Association Annual Conference that the pianists at Weber were presenting at. Anyway, we flew out of Des Moines with no problems. There were tons of open seats on the flight. However, when we got to St Paul/Minneapolis we were in the airport for a long time. There were several flights that they called our names on but there was only one seat on the plane left. We knew the flights around 7 and 9 had tons of open seats on them so we knew we would get out of there in time for our presentation. We ended up watching Bedtime Stories, eating, reading, and playing games on the computer. I really believe we did not get on a flight all day because of my parents driving home. They were driving in a blizzard. There were several times they had to call us to ask us what the roads were like up ahead. Once they were on clear roads and out of the blizzard, we got on a plane. I truly believe it was a blessing in disguise at the moment. It was frustrating then, but it looking back it was definitely a blessing. We finally got to Cali and our best pianist friend Zoe came to pick us up. We had a dress rehearsal right when we get there at 8:30 at night. The rehearsal didn't end til 10:30, which as 12:30 IA time. We were so tired from waking up at at 5 in the morning and then not getting to bed til 1 (IA time which we were used to).
The next day was our presentation involving dancers. It was so much fun! As soon as we were done we went to Disneyland!!! We had so much fun! It was not crowded and we got a super good deal on our tickets! We hopper tickets and got to ride every ride we wanted (except Thundermountain Railroad which was closed and being renovated). We really enjoyed Disneyland. Neither of us really like Disneyland we think it's overrated, but we had tons of fun since it wasn't super crowded.  Cars Land was SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!! That was by far my favorite part! We went at night and it was all lit up in the Neon just like in the movie. And the ride in Cars Land was even better! I was smiling the rest of the night because of it! It wasn't intense or anything, it was just so cute!
The next day we drove home with Zoe and her boyfriend. That was also tons of fun! We really like both Zoe and Jake!

                                                                 

                                                          The Classic Disneyland Picture

                                                Collin made the same face as the green aliens!

                                     Our favorite Jungle Cruise ride tour guide, Jeremy Jensen!!!!

                                                           Cars Land! I was so happy!!!!

                     The awesome Cars Ride that I don't remember the name of! See how big my smile is?!

World of Colors was also super awesome!

Our awesome drive home!!!! We love Jake and Zoe!

Spring Break part 1

Our Spring Break was so fun! But very busy! We left on March 6 to drive to Davenport, Iowa with my parents.  Wyoming was so boring and SO LONG! We did stop at Little America Hotel to get ice cream cones though! So that helped! My parents were lucky and got to sit in the back and watch movies for once! They kept joking that we were the Mom and Dad and they were the kids since we were the ones driving. We drove to North Platte, NE the first day and stayed the night there. We found a super great deal with that though because our continental breakfast was a free breakfast at a diner next door. It was super great!
The next day we drove the rest of the way through NE and IA. There were really cool migratory birds in NE that were fun to watch! There were TONS of them! My dad especially loved them! NE and IA were full of corn fields! I'm sure during summer it is super pretty and green.
We really like IA. We got there on Thursday and had dinner. We went back to our hotel that night and played games. It was so fun! I love when my dad plays games with us! Friday morning we drove around the area to look around. We also met with some ward members there and talked with them. They told us about the area and the ward. Then we went swimming in our hotel pool and went to dinner. Saturday was the big important day.  We went to see the Mississippi River that morning. It was raining so it was kinda cool. Then we were at Palmer College of Chiropractics for a school tour day. I was feeling sick so that was not fun! The school was really cool though. We had interactive classes and lunch and free chiropractics while we were there! That was the first time I had ever been to the chiropractor and it was so nice! We then drove to Des Moines that night cause Collin and I then had to fly from the Des Moines Airport to California while my parents drove back home.