Our Life in Pictures

Whew! It's been a busy fall! Here's a little tour through our lives:

We've been eating ALOT of Chipotle lately. My planning/preparing of meals has slowed down significantly since school started...so we make that one block walk across the street to grab our favorite fully satisfying burritos frequently

We've been to FOUR weddings in the past four weeks! Lots of love going on. This is my good friend from high school Amanda with her husband Taylor....and if that dress looks familiar, it's because we chose the same wedding dress...what are the chances?

This is the view I have about 90% of the time I spend at home.

THIS is my favorite sight to see at home though :)

MMMMM halloween candy! We passed this out at our small group last night

We carved pumpkins with our friends! We also toasted some pumpkin seeds and made pumpkins muffins. Pumpkins were the theme of the night!

Also...we've been sick. We've been downing this beverage most nights for the past 2 weeks. MMM Nyquil Cold/Flu Relief!

 

 

 

So there you go....more coming up soon :)

marriage

So one of the great things about marriage....is having other people care about your marriage. We fully believe that to have a healthy and successful marriage, you have to let other people in. You have to be vulnerable and committed to community because we're all in this together.

Today we received this in the mail

How wonderful are these coupons?!

Thank you Jordan, April, and Jeriah for loving us and encouraging our marriage. What a wonderful gift you've given us!

The smell is fall is in the air

Hello Autumn!!

I'm very excited that summer is fading into fall. Summer is great and all but by the time August hits I'm usually just hot, sweaty, not sure what to wear because it's freezing in the air conditioning but disgustingly sticky on the one minute walk to a car, and end up spending more time inside but feel guilty because it's "so nice" outside. Ok...now that I've gotten that off my chest...WOO HOO FALL!

pumpkins, sweatshirts, football, crisp leaves, scarves, blankets, apple cider, halloweekends!, hay rides, chili, hot chocolate, and getting ready for christmas. Love.

Dana and I went to Hocking Hills yesterday with friends of ours, Meg and Colin. It felt so good to be outside in the fresh air. The park was gorgeous and we had a blast :) And it was my first time going there! I feel more like an Ohioan now.
In other news, our nephew turned ONE today!!! Jeriah we love you and we wish we could celebrate with you! Here's the little nugget at Christmas last year. Now he's a lot bigger and walking and being cute as ever.


In the past few weeks, I've been doing a lot of work with the kids at the elementary schools in Dublin. These first graders are adorable. I met a little girl the other day whose name is Zoey. I picked Zoey up from her classroom and asked her "So how's your day going?". She responded "Great, I just LOVE school!". I knew we were going to be best friends after that.

Dana's been working lots of hours but it's slowing down! Baller. We've been spending lots of evenings with our friends and it's been wonderful. Once school starts I won't have the luxury of free nights so I'm soaking up as much time as I can with people.

We've been working on our apartment in the past few weeks as well. We put up more curtains and placed some of our wedding pictures in the empty frames all over the place. It feels more and more cozy everyday.

Fall goodies for the coffee table!
The Most Comfortable Bed in the World!
Curtains and Pictures on the wall!
The other side of the bedroom
Our bathroom now has a curtain! What up!Updated Mantle with Wedding Picture and fun branches I found at gallery hop

We have a fun-filled fall coming up. I have three cousins (for real) and a best friend all getting married in the next month or so. Dane and I have season tickets to the OSU football games... Love the Shoe. Visiting family. Pumpkin carving and roasted pumpkin seeds. Birthday and Thanksgiving.

Life is good.

Soldiers and Health Insurance

Ok, first of all, if you have not had a chance to view this video below...please do so. It made me cry for 10 minutes straight but was so moving.

Surprise Military Homecomings

Ok, now that you can't see because your eyes are swollen and snot is covering your face...here's a little update on our lives.

• Last week I had the opportunity to "intern" if you will at a camp in Perrysville, OH. This camp is called Camp Nuhop and it's primary goal is to provide a positive summer camp experience for children with behavior disorders, ADHD, and several other mental health diagnoses. This was my Mental Health Fieldwork experience for the Occupational Therapy program and lucky for me was very different from the typical lock down psychiatric unit most of my classmates experienced.

• I participated in many of the typical camp things such as canoeing, huge slip and slide, all day hikes, packed lunches, creepy ghost stories, arts and craft time, tubing, and I got to do it with kids who normally wouldn't have this opportunity. This is was the first time any OSU OT students spent a week at this camp and me and my friend Cassie's main role was to identify where OT was already taking place and how it could be incorporated better for these kids. Most of the kids already receive OT services throughout their week.

• It was an interesting week and continued to solidify my desire to work in pediatrics once my program is through.

• We have a new car!! Well...new to us...and pretty darn amazing. Dana's parents graciously gave us a Red Cavalier (I don't know anything other than that... I'm car illiterate) that has been such a blessing to us. We knew that once fall kicked in, we were going to have to start thinking about buying a car to replace Dana's but had no idea how that was going to come together. Thanks, God! And Mom and Dad Hazen.

• I officially started my Graduate Research Assistant job Today!
• Yes it's official...this is also the first time I've seen my new name on something other than a court document or the doodles of my anatomy notes.

• So what does a "Graduate Associate" do? Well I will tell you!
  

• I have the opportunity to work with two amazing OTs in an elementary school that is out of this world. Seriously, the staff there are wonderful. These OTs have developed a program called Write Start.
  

• Write Start aims to teach Kindergartners and 1st Graders the correct way to develop automatic, legible handwriting. Research has shown that to be successful in this skill, specific instruction in handwriting is needed (the OT provides this instruction). When the motor mechanics of handwriting become automatic, students are better able to focus on writing content and composition. When students are free to let their minds create (or take notes later on) rather than recalling letters or letter formation, their academic performance increases.

• MY role will be pre and post testing 2 classrooms full of kiddos using a few standardized assessments. I will be in the school ALOT for the first few weeks of their school year.

• Once the pre-testing is done, I will be assisting the OT as she implements the program 2 days a week in the school for 12 weeks. I will then be evaluating the data from those sessions weekly and then providing more thorough evaluation once the program is finished in the school (in December).
  

• After December, there will be lots of data analysis (this is where having a logistician for a husband comes in handy...haha) and research for the rest of the school year.

• If you stopped reading about 4 bullet points up...its ok. I'm just excited about this project and could talk forever. One of the perks of this project?? Fully paid tuition for 4 quarters as well as a stipend. Holy answered prayer. That means we only have to pay for one more quarter of college after that and then freedom!! Until I start paying loans off...

• Dana's still working away BUT he's off overtime which mean he goes in at 5:30 am instead of 4:30! Hello extra hour of sleep!
  

• P.S. Still trying to get Dana to update this thing...as you can see, they are becoming a little liv focused.
  

• Now to end this post...Health Insurance. You know you're becoming an adult when you get excited about your new health insurance including the doctors you already go to. I was seriously worried when Dana added me to his insurance that I was going to have to find all new doctors...but I don't. And I'm happy. And probably a loser.
  

Coffee Table!

It's been a little busy here at the Hazen household over the past week or so. Dana's been working as hard as ever and I've been completing my clinical for occupational therapy (more on that experience later). But here are some pictures to hold you over

We bought a coffee table!! Our apartment is slowly becoming more than just a space of chairs!

Here's another view...We like it!
More to come later. Happy August!

Wedding Pictures!

We have some wedding pictures posted!

http://www.lotzstudiosblog.com/home/2010/7/29/olivia-dana.html

Hope you like them!

I like Kids

These are the little boys I babysit. I've had the privilege of babysitting them at least weekly for the past four years and I've loved watching them grow up. Gavin is the goober you see below. He was pretty excited about the blow pop he was allowed to eat as his snack. I started babysitting Gavin when he was 5 months old and he just turned 4 this past May. He loves Super Heros, saving Princess Olivia ( I swear I didn't make him call me that), and taking toys from his little brother.

This is Brett. He turns 2 in August. He's just about the cutest thing you've ever seen and has just starting talking which is really fun. Brett loves to mimic everything Gavin does, whine for no reason at all, and make me laugh non-stop because he's so dang funny.

And I just think this picture is hilarious. I told them to puff their cheeks out like chipmunks...and this is what I got. Brett's face kills me.

This is where we live

We've been working really hard and realizing how much time it takes to fully decorate a room. We still have lots of things to finish like curtains, rugs, tables, etc and those will come in time. We've made a lot of progress from the first few days of moving in and we hope you think so too!

Before Moving In Pictures

This is what you see when you walk in the front door

This is the front door and the wall that it sits on
This is the front window that faces Northwest Blvd.
This is the view of the rest of the apartment!


Moving In Pictures! Stuff is Everywhere!
Here is a shot from the living room all the way through the apartment

The boxes never end! This is our dining room leading into the bedroom.
After Moving In Pictures!
This is our cute little fireplace! The mirror was a gift from our friend Cindy and we love it.

This is the other side of the room! We won the couch (yes you read that right) from JCPenney...holla! And then we slowly added the frame artwork, pillows, and blanket.
Here is the wall that faces Northwest Blvd. Thanks Mom and Mike for the Couch! Sorry the lighting is a little weird.
Here is our sweet little dining room! We LOVE our new table and Dana had just brought me flowers that day so our table is bright and cheery!
One of the reasons we love this apartment is because it has so much character. The floors creak, there are archways rather than doorways, and this little beauty! A random something in the wall that is perfect for this little vase Heather gave us for our wedding. Gerber daisies were the flower of choice that day :)
Enjoy!

One Year Ago Today...

Dana proposed to me. Saying "YES!" to my future husband has led to so many blessings for us and we LOVE being married. We celebrated our engagement tonight by taking a walk down to one of our favorite restaurants, Figlio, and enjoying a delicious meal before heading back home to eat ice cream out of coffee cups. This was something new I learned about Dana after we got married. I've always known this kid has an abnormal obsession for all things ice cream but the coffee cup was something new. It was a very sweet way to acknowledge the question the started the it all!

July 21, 2009 : E-Day

We became husband and wife on June 18, 2010 and I'm just gonna say it...we had the most fun wedding of all time! We loved every single part of our day and left the reception saying "we wouldn't have changed a thing!". We had so many people helping us make the wedding come together and we needed it! Thank the Lord for creative and hard-working family and friends. We don't have our professional pictures back yet...but they did give us this little teaser


The apartment is coming along really well! This past week was a big week in the Hazen home!

• We had cable, internet, and HOT water installed!
• We were the recipients of a free washer! Thank you Kim and TD! So excited to go downstairs to do laundry instead of mom's house.
• We inherited an end table that we turned into our TV table and a wall shelf from my mama.
• We finally moved my dresser over from the condo which has given us some more space to fit all of our clothes. We're still working on a way to effectively store the many articles of clothing we both own and it's proving to be a challenge but the dresser certainly helps.
  
• We got a dining room table and set of chairs from Susie and Andy Danec! We were able to use our placemats, napkins, AND napkin rings...along with our wonderful dishes. This was a really meaningful moment for me to set my own table and then make a meal for my husband. I'm chalking it up to all of those evenings growing up where I was forced to set the table and remember ridiculous details such as "the knife points in" and "glasses go on the right of the plate not in the middle". I loved our family meals as a kid and it's pretty cool that we're starting that tradition as well. I even took some pictures to capture the moment:

Check this out Mom!

Before this table, this is what our meals looked like:Spaghetti...on the couch...with boxes surrounding us...but the corona helps!

We're still decorating and organizing the place but it looks really great so far and we're excited for all the pieces to come together. Here's a picture of our favorite corner in the apartment. When Dana's sister April and her husband Jordan were in town for the wedding, they found this great furniture shop called The Red Chair. It's a little shop with extremely unique pieces that just happens to be a few blocks down from where we live! Dana went with them to look around and spotted this little beauty. Well, April and Jordan, being the wonderfully generous people that they are, gave us a gift certificate to this store as a wedding gift.

We went there everyday for days hoping it would be open so we could purchase this chair! And low and behold...on day five...the owner was there and we found the chair! And about 15 other pictures of furniture we would love to own. So now it's sitting in our "reading corner" which I love and laugh at because we already have 2 couches, a one and a half chair and ottoman, and a bed...so clearly we have no where else to read in our five room apartment.

We really do love it and we love you Leviens!

We'll be posting more pictures of the place soon!

As for the daily routine of life...Dana is working long days and even Saturdays during this busy time at JCPenney. He leaves around 4:30 am and I'm pretty sure every morning when he comes in to kiss my goodbye...I'm confused and ask him where he's going and why. It's been a month...you'd think I be used to it by now. Haha. He's still as positive as ever when he comes home though and we're enjoying the nights we get to spend together.

My days are far less intensive and usually consist of babysitting two incredibly cute little boys, housework, grocery shopping, hanging out with friends, watching Friends, and cooking up something yummy for supper time. I'm enjoying this time off from classes at the moment because once fall quarter hits...my free time may not exist. I'm taking a full course load, organizing our school's job far for next spring, and starting a GRA position working with an OT in Dublin Schools and I'm SUPER excited for this opportunity. So even though I feel slightly guilty for finding a loop hole in this "working full time being an adult thing" I know this time of refreshment and relaxation is needed before the school year starts again.

We're hosting our small group "Lagos" at our apartment now! It's been wonderful inviting people into our home to meet the Lord and build community. Doing ministry together was something we were both excited to do as a married couple. In the short time we've been married, we've realized how rich our walks with Jesus can be now that we're seeking Him together. I love how much we've grown already and so excited for a lifetime of this!

That's the run down for now! Thanks for reading!
Liv & Dana

Welcome!

Thanks for checking out our blog! We decided to make this blog to document our first year of marriage and keep our amazing family and friends up to date on our lives. We both treasure our families and though it is not always feasible to spend the time that we want with all 29573 of them (and no...this is not an exaggeration...haha), we can hop on our computer and give a little update on the daily adventures we will encounter. A more lengthy update will be coming soon...I just wanted to get the word out. Happy Summer!