Merry Christmas!

Hello All,
We've been having a great time in the cold Ellensburg these past few weeks. Here is what we did:

We made gingerbread houses! well... kinda... It was the college student cheap way with gram crackers and frosting! It was a fun activity and we watched Elf again while we made them. Matt laughs so hard at that movie every single time haha... We both love it.

Last weekend we drove to Richland to watch my sister Lenise's show choir performance. It was really good. She sang 'O Holy Night' at it and was SO amazing. We were glad we decided to go because it was worth it.

We got tired of no heater because we were freezing all day so we decided to leave it at a low temperature and even that helped a lot so we are staying warmer then usual!

This last Sunday we 'Ovoo'ed our friends Brittanee, Devyn, Will, and Suzi all at the same time! Technology is so great that even though all of us are in different places, we can still stay in contact and have fun together.

On Monday we went to Sherlock Holmes 2 which we were super excited to see! It was great just so you know and we both recommend it to anyone who wants to see a good movie.

We JUST got our wedding pictures in the mail so to all of you who wanted some from me: They are coming! I hung some up yesterday and love them. Thanks Sharee your a great photographer :)

Matt and I leave tomorrow evening to go to my parents house in West Richland for CHRISTMAS! We are so excited and have a few presents under out paper-made Christmas tree. Then the 26th we fly off to Virginia!! which is exciting because we haven't been able to see Matt's family since the wedding. Also we plan on going to Washinton DC and going to some sites there along with the DC temple too so we are really looking forward to going to visit the Montoya family.

Well I hope you all have a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year also. We are so happy to know all of you and are grateful for your support and love towards us.

We LOVE you!
Leisha and Matt Montoya

He sees you when your sleeping, He knows when your awake....!

It's almost Christmas and we haven't done any shopping yet!! Being as the only stores we have here are FredMyer, SafeWay, and a grocery store we have to drive 30 minutes to a Target or Wal-Mart and 40 minutes to a Mall. So it's made things a little difficult but hopefully we'll make a trip to Yakima to go Christmas shopping soon!

This week Matt turned in his last final papers for his first quarter of grad school and is now VERY happy to be free to read, work out, play the guitar and make Christmas cookies with me to take to the neighbors (we did that for family night tonight)

On Saturday we drove to Leavenworth. There were about 1000 people there and it was packed. We all gathered together and sang Christmas songs and did a count down for them to light the whole town. It was beautiful with all the trees, and shops lit up. We met up with some distant relatives of mine there and they showed us around.

We are excited to be getting to know our ward better. Matt had 3 hours of meetings thought this Sunday about scouts that I think he got a little bored at... hahaha...

Well we'll update you all later! Have a great week!

Leisha and Matt Montoya

Another week

Hey Friends and Family,

A pretty uneventful week for us here in Ellensburg.  We came to the realization that there's less to do in Ellensburg than there was in Rexburg!  One bowling alley... a theater.. that's about it.   For everything else we have to drive to Yakima.  They have food and ice cream places though so we went to Dairy Queen on Thursday and on Friday we went to Fred Meyer and walked around for an hour or so.. .Which was more fun than we thought it would be.  We also got Netflix for 1 month free to keep us occupied, and there's a couple from another ward that are organizing get-togethers for married students this month so maybe we'll make  some friends...  That would be good. And we're getting together with a nice couple this weekend that I met at school.

We've also been going to institute, and that's been a lot of fun.  Classes are over for the quarter though so we'll have to get a little more creative.  I have a week left to finish my two term papers but I won't bore you with the details of them.  Leisha's been working and decorating our apartment nicely for Christmas time.  Other than that we're looking forward to going to Richland the week of Christmas and then Virginia the day after Christmas.

Have a good week!

Matt and Leisha

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Hey Freinds!
This past week has been a little crazy for us! Here is why:

I had on red lipstick!

Last Saturday Matt and I decided that for our date we would go sledding at night time like we used to in Rexburg. We drove about 15 minutes away from our apartment to the sledding hill we heard of. The roads were icy and we slowly slipped across the other lane and into the ditch!!! Don't worry, we were fine and the car wasn't damaged either. We slid pretty slow. So we waited for the tow truck to come and we got towed out of the ditch! It was quite the adventure I must say...

Matt didn't like it very much haha

I was able to get work off the week after Christmas so we are looking forward to go to Virginia and visit the Montoya family :)

The sky was so orange when it snowed!

We tend to leave our shoes by the door...

Matt and I have been cooking together every night to master a few of our favorite meals. We've discovered homemade sweet and sour chicken, stir fry and Fried chicken. We now know it's better if you make it and decided to never buy it at a restaurant again!

We went to the Tri-Cities for Thanksgiving! The night before thanksgiving I talked Matt into stop doing his homework for a few hours and we went rollerskating with my family and kids from our ward! It was hard to master rollerskating instead of rollerblading but we caught on eventually. Luckily we didn't have too hard of falls!
Thanksgiving was fun! My Grandma Volmer reserved the Stake center for the family and we played basketball, dodge ball, other games, cooked and ate the Thanksgiving feast! There was also a talent show and lots of pie!

Matt has 2 weeks left of the quarter and has been working like crazy on his final papers he has to write. The day before Thanksgiving he got up at 6am and did his homework until 6:30 pm....we went skating...and he came home and did More from 8:30 to 11! So he's crazy busy with that!

We drove home late on Thanksgiving evening and I woke up at 4am to be at work for black Friday! I worked for 12 hours at the store and cleaning that day and we still went to Yakima to return some things and go shopping! After we were done shopping at Target we went out to find our car. "that's our car" Matt said. "no it's not it has a white line on the side. we don't have that" I told him...come to find out someone Keyed our car in a perfect line on each side of the car, making it look like it was supposed to be there... We asked a patrol cop to help us and he said there's nothing we could do. So that was upsetting but at least it's on both sides and at least it is completely straight! At first Matt was like "wasn't that there before?" haha that tells you how normal it looks I guess!

We went out to get a Christmas tree yesterday and were surprised at the cost! We settled for some Christmas lights and put them up in our living room and watched the movie ELF to be a little festive!

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are doing great! We'll update you soon
Leisha and Matt Montoya

Busy busy busy...

Hey Everyone,
This week has been pretty busy for us. Matt has lots of homework, projects and presentations to work on. As for me, I've been cleaning lots of houses, working at the decorating store and getting another apartment ready for renting! So we've been pretty busy.

We are very excited that I got work off the week after Christmas! This means we get to go Virginia to visit the Montoya Clan :) We've been talking about it a lot.
We should be out making more friends but we're pretty content just skyping some of our best friends from college: Will Gierke and Devyn Lafrance. We laugh pretty hard talking to them every week.

I've found out that Matt is a really good natural cook. He just made up his own sweat and sour chicken recipe that was amazing and some stir fry the other day too. So i'm pretty lucky to eat some good quality food.

I went Elk hunting with my parents last week and my mom got a cow elk!

This is a picture of our apartment complex that we manage. It's little but it's fun to live here :)

Well I'll talk to you all next week!
Love The Montoya Family

Another week

Hello everyone.  This week we had Halloween, and we dressed up as Alice and the Mad Hatter.  Everyone says that I don't look very happy in the pictures but that's because the white makeup made my teeth look really yellow so I couldn't smile crazily like I should have...

So there's that.  We went to watch Harry Potter 7.2 in those costumes, they were showing it on campus.

Friday night we went to the Olive Garden in Yakima and it was a party. Other than that, we had some friends over last night to play games, it's the first time we've had people over.  It was pretty fun, but we still need to make more friends. 

I've been doing a lot of homework this week, and Leisha's been working her two jobs and really likes the home decorating job.  She wants to open up her own business someday.  She also went elk hunting with her parents and they shot a big elk!

We are having fun and learning lots.  Until next time,

Matt

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Hey Everyone! So what have we been up to since we've been married? Well I'll tell you...

Matt and I have been apartment managers so we've been cutting trees, raking pine needles, painting apartments and taking rents.
Matt has been going to school at Central Washington University and really likes his classes. He has lots of homework but usually gets enough done to still play with me :)



One day while walking to our car we found that we had a pumpkin/squash patch behind the apartment complex.Our boss said it was ours if we wanted it so we picked the 2 green pumpkins and carved them for Family Night! We also picked the squash...at least that's what we think it is. I cooked it once and made zucchini bread out of it once too so we're not sure what it is!
We carved our pumpkins into Calvin and Hobbes!
We went to Richland this last weekend and dressed up as my dad (the bishop) at the ward Halloween party!

I've been working 2 jobs: I clean houses and offices for a cleaning company and I also work at a home decorating store called Real Deals.

On Sunday we both gave talks in our new ward on  spiritual preparedness. It went pretty well I think!

Tonight for Halloween we're going to go watch Harry Potter 7 Part 2 at the campus theater, make caramel apples and hopefully dress up some crazy way. We'll put up pictures next week!

Talk to you all later

Leisha & Matt Montoya