Parents for a Weekend

Two weekends ago Kevin and I got to babysit my two adorable nieces, ages 5 and almost 4. I am going to write an account of the weekend because I don’t want to forget, but I am sure there will be way more details than any of you need to know. I just don’t want to break out the journal and handwrite all this.

I picked them up Saturday morning and brought them back to our place and immediately started decorating ornaments for their parents. I think they had a lot of fun. After a snack, it was time for Toy Story 3, their current obsession. I took a nap while they watched, and then my loving husband put the girls down for a nap so I could continue mine. After our naps, off we went to McDonalds for some happy meals and playtime. Then we went to the Festival of Lights, which the girls LOVED! We went around twice, and I have to say, it is much more fun going with two little girls that were excited about all the lights. Bed time was fairly uneventful, thank goodness!

Sunday morning Kevin had meetings, and I had one as well. The girls came with me, which I don’t think they enjoyed too much. Having 1:00 pm church is not fun when you have little girls that need a nap around that time. I feel sorry for all the parents out there that have afternoon church. The girls love Primary no matter what ward they are in, so I felt good about leaving them in there for the next 2 hours. After church and dinner, came a much needed nap. We watched Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph and then it was Christmas cookie time! I love decorating cookies with the girls, not sure why, but I do. Kevin made some delicious candy cane ice cream and we just relaxed for a while.

Monday I worked from home half the day to watch the girls. I tried to get as much as I could done before they woke up. They were pretty low maintenance once I got them ready and fed. It was a blast to have them for a couple days and it makes it even harder to say good-bye when they move to AZ this week.

First Thanksgiving

Kevin and I spent out first Thanksgiving together as a married couple and it was pretty great. My parents and little sister drove up from California and we spent Thanksgiving Day with my Dad’s side of the family. Dinner was good and pretty uneventful until my older cousin Zack threw a wadded up piece of roll and it hit my younger sister Heidi right in the eye. Her eye was pretty swollen after that and I think it still hurts.

It was so strange to have Black Friday start the night before. We attempted to go to Toys R’Us at 10 pm, but the line was at least 2 hours long outside, so we made our way to Walmart and wondered around figuring out what items we were going to stake out for the next couple of hours. Our group consisted of my parents, Aunt Judy, my three sisters and my little brother. We paired off and it was a lot of fun. I ended up just buying a bunch of stuff for Kevin and me. The most exciting purchase: a Sonicare toothbrush. Exciting, I know. The movie section was like a mosh pit, so I sent my little brother in for the movies we needed and he had a blast. I attempted to brave the crowd for a couple minutes, but I was nearly trampled, so I retreated and let my brother do the work. The store was so disorganized and we waited in line for over 2 hours, but finally finished around 2:30 am. I was glad to have it over with and get some sleep.

I loving having all kinds of firsts as a semi newly married couple. We put up our tree this weekend and it was kind of surreal. We bought a 7.5 artificial tree, and it is way bigger than I thought it was going to be. Our place isn’t that big and it just seems huge in our tiny living room. I think my favorite part of the whole ordeal was when Kevin opened the tree box and was shocked and very frustrated to find that we had to assemble the tree branch by branch. His family didn’t have an artificial tree when he was growing up, so it was a new and not so exciting experience for him. I found it quite entertaining.

Between the two of us, we had plenty of ornaments to cover the tree. I inherited (in other words “took” ) a bunch of ornaments from my grandparents since they have both passed away. Most of them are duplicates of the ornaments they sent to us growing up, so they bring back a lot of memories. For some reason I really love Christmas ornaments and tend to buy them throughout the year. We even bought a couple on our Honeymoon in Cancun. I just love to have memories of those special trips and events in my life. I really wish I had taken pictures of us decorating our first tree together. Maybe we will have to reenact it tonight for a photo op.

A Quick Update

I feel like time is just flying by. Obviously, I have been pretty busy. Work was insane for about the first month, working 12-15 hours a day and some weekends. Things have calmed down, but I also finally have a calling at Church. I am the Second Counselor in the Young Women’s presidency. It has been a lot of fun, though none of the girls are very "girly" and I don’t feel like I can relate to them. Welcome to Spanish Fork! It is just so weird to me that they don’t care about makeup, hair and nails. I think I should probably work on fixing that.

I am so excited for the upcoming Holidays! My parents are coming to Utah for Thanksgiving and we are going to celebrate my grandmother’s 90^th birthday, which happens to be on Thanksgiving. Christmas plans haven’t been finalized yet, but it looks like Kevin and I will be spending our first Christmas together by ourselves. I am kind of excited about it, though I will miss my family. I am sure we will meet up with some of them the day before or after or something.

For those who are wondering, I am not pregnant. Need to make a doctor’s appointment to see if we can figure out why. I find it so awkward when people ask (well people I don’t know that well) because it is such a sensitive subject and I start crying almost every time I tell them no. I know it will happen, I just have to be patient.

Married life has been great. Not perfect, but great. I can’t believe it has already been more than seven months. Pretty soon it will be a year and that just baffles me. My wedding dress will finally get paid off next week, which will really mean all the wedding stuff is over. Of course there are all those thank you cards that never got written . . .

Kevin still travels a ton, but I am coping. I try to turn the time into my productive time. Kevin bought me a sewing machine for our six month anniversary and I have been putting together projects. I haven't started any of them yet, but I hope to soon.

I have really gotten into baking, and Halloween was way too much fun for me. I will have to post food pics later.

And that's a quick update on my life.

Working Girl

Well, I'm entering the workforce again. Tomorrow. I have been trying to avoid getting a job since I got married, but I knew the day would come eventually. Starting tomorrow I will be the new Marketing Director at eFileCabinet. (I actually don't know if my title will actually be Marketing Director, but I'm sticking with that until I hear otherwise.) For some of you, that company name may sound familiar. Yes, that is where I was employed when I met my dear husband. I was the Events Coordinator for 2 years, then got let go do to downsizing a little over a year ago. The current Marketing Director quit yesterday and the CEO immediately thought of hiring me. He knew I would never come back and work there until she was gone (we didn't get along to say the least) and seems genuinely excited to have me back. I know he is panicked because they have a huge product launch on the 23rd. Luckily, I know the product pretty well, so things should transition pretty smoothly.

When I got laid off last year, my job responsibilities mostly got shifted over to marketing, so I will still be doing all of those tasks, among more marketing focused assignments.

Since Kevin still works at there, they are putting my on a 3-month trial basis, just to make sure there aren't any problems. Kevin couldn't be happier. He gets to see me A LOT more, and we can pay off all of our debts and start saving money. We get to carpool, so we get to save even more money!

I think this will be a really good experience. I can't believe how perfect everything seems to be working out. I feel incredibly blessed.

Words of Wisdom

My mom emailed this to me tonight and I thought it was pretty funny.

Washington Lake

Most people who have ever met me know that I am not much of a camper. I pretty much hate camping. BUT . . . somehow my lovely husband and my family talked me into going camping over the 24th weekend. Most of my dad's side of the family go camping each year, and we were invited to go with them this year. The campsite was a large group site up at Washington Lake in the Uintas. Very close to Mirror Lake, for those of you who are familiar with the area.

The only way that I was persuaded was that we only slept there one night, and my aunt and uncle let me use the "facilities" in their RV. And I have to admit, I actually had a good time. There were over 35 people in our group, so there was always a lot going on. We were just a few min walk from the Lake, which was gorgeous. We had a ton of delicious food and the weather was perfect! If it weren't for my husband's snoring (I only got about 4 hours of sleep because of it) I think I would have been willing to stay another night.

The second say we drove up to Mirror Lake so some people could do some fishing up there. I enjoyed working on crossword puzzles with my little brother in the nice fresh air. Here are a few pics from the trip.

Katy's Senior Pics

My little sister, Katy, will be a senior in the Fall and wanted her senior pictures taken while she was out here last week. I don't have much experience with photographing people professionally, but I thought I would give it a shot. (Pun intended.) Here are some of my favorites.

I Was Asked to Speak On . . .

I have to give a talk on Sunday for the first time in over 8 years. Some how I managed to sneak under the radar through all my BYU wards and years beyond. At least I get to spend most of my time introducing us. I'm still terrified though. Every talk I have heard here in Spanish Fork have mentioned either hunting or farming and I don't know anything about either one of those. I don't know how I am going to relate to my audience. Wish me luck!

Celebrating Freedom

Fourth of July Weekend was a blast. Here are a few pics from our many festivities, including Patio of Fire, Stadium of Fire, my Dad's birthday party and the Layton City Fun Run that my family ran/walked. Most of them are of my nieces and nephew because they are the cutest!

Kevin and I enjoying the Patio of Fire.

Cool formation at the Stadium of Fire

None of my pics of Carrie Underwood came out, so here is a pic of Kevin and me and instead!

My family decided to run/walk a 5k on Monday. Kevin pushed my niece and nephew most of the way, he was excited to finish.

My dad pushed my almost 90-year-old grandma. She loved it.

Nephew Liam loved the race.


We finished, phew!

Warming up after swimming in the pool. Check out those blue eyes!

Jessica is ready for a swim!

Isabel not crying for once.

Kaylee is just too cute!

The Last Two Months

I know I have been horrible about blogging. I keep thinking I need to write about the wedding and the honeymoon and it just seems so daunting that I have been avoiding it. So, I'm not going to write about them, for now at least. I posted pics on Facebook, so you can check them out there and get a feel for what happened.

As for playing catch up, here are a few adventures we have had since we got hitched over two months ago:

Philadelphia! It was a lot of fun. Kevin had a meeting with some people at QVC, so we made a drive up to their corporate offices and I just hung out in the lobby. It was kind of cool since that is where they do all the filming. I wanted to get my picture in front of the sign, but I didn't want to look like a fool, so I opted to just take a picture of it.

The hotel was a little boutique hotel close to lots of shopping and within walking distance of most of the historical sites. This made it convenient for me since Kevin worked the whole time and we didn't have a car. The first room they put us in smelled like vomit, so they upgraded us to a suite that smelled like Indian food. The rooms were still tiny and the bed was only a double, which felt tiny compared to the King size bed we were used to sleeping in while in Cancun the week before.

Being in Philly, we had to go to get cheese steaks. We tried both Geno's and Pat's and I liked Geno's better.

One of my best friends took a bus from NYC to spend the day with me and we had a blast! Tony and I always seem to find great food when we are together. We also visited Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and did a little shopping. Thanks to Tony for coming to see me!

Kevin also had is 30th birthday while we were in Philly. He had to work most of the day, but we did manage to make it down to the Liberty Bell again and then the LOVE statue.

Later we went to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe and got frozen yogurt. I felt bad that I couldn't do more for his birthday, but I guess there is always next year.

After being home for a little less than two weeks, we drove up to the Seattle area for our Open House. It was quite the drive, and when were were about 45 mins or so from his parent's house, the sun roof of Kevin's car shattered. Luckily there was a shade inside that caught the glass so we were protected, but the sound scared us to death. The Open House was a lot of fun and I'm so grateful for Kevin's family for all their help. It was fun to meet people from Kevin's childhood and to hear how much he was loved. It was nice to have my parents and little sister there too. And once again, absolutely no rain while I was there. I don't know how it happens, but it always stops raining while I am in Washington.

On a more depressing note, a week and a half after we got back from Washington, my grandfather got really sick and passed away. To make a long story short, he had global bleeding in his brain and we decided to take him off life support. It was incredibly sad, but he was so lonely without my grandmother who had passed away in 2003. He had been depressed ever since, so we are grateful that they can be together again. My grandfather had been in the same house for 45 years, and wouldn't let us touch it after my grandmother passed, so we spent a week going through their stuff and trying to clean the house. They were both smokers so it was quite the project. It looks like my younger sister Heidi and her family will be moving in once they can get it fixed up enough. It will be nice to keep the house in the family. I have a lot of childhood memories there.

About two weeks after the funeral, Kevin had a business trip in Las Vegas and I got to tag a long. The drive seemed short compared to our drive to Bremerton the month before. We stayed at the Vdara, a new hotel right next to the Bellagio. The hotel was so nice and smoke free!!! There is no casino and I just liked the feel of it. We were on the 36th floor and our view was kind of nice. We would stay there again in a heartbeat. The location is perfect and the rooms were so nice, and I can't tell you how nice it was not smelling like smoke every night.

I've been to Las Vegas more times than I can count, but I have never been to the Coke store, so I begged Kevin to go with me this time. I'm not a huge fan of Coke, but I have always wanted to taste all the Coke products from around the world. I have to say, most of them were pretty gross, but I'm glad I finally got to experience it.

Busy, Busy, Busy

New posts are coming, I promise. I am working on one for the wedding day, then I will get to the Honeymoon. We got home late last night from Cancun and leave tomorrow morning for Philadelphia, so we are running around crazy today trying to get things done and unpacked/packed. I will have lots of time in Philadelphia to catch up, so look for some updates later this week.

Love you all!

Stress

Pretty sure if Kevin and I can get through planning this wedding without killing each other, our marriage is going to be just fine.

I have no patience anymore, and poor Kevin has to dealing with my breakdowns everyday.

It can't come soon enough!

Counting the Days

I had my final wedding dress fitting today and the dress if officially in my possession! It’s been a long 3 months, but so worth it. I love it so much! It just makes me that more anxious for the big day. I should be doing bridals in a couple weeks, so I can post pics then. Kevin will be taking my bridals, so I won’t care about hiding the dress from him after that.

The invitations are in the final design phase, and should go to the printer next week. Can’t wait to get them out of the way!

We have signed the contract with the florist and I’m so excited to see how everything turns out. I am doing mostly hot pink lady roses, fuchsia spray roses, white lisianthus, white stephanotis and white roses. Should be pretty!

Our engagement pictures turned out so good! Thanks to Ashley for doing an amazing job. I still have to get the edited ones from Kevin, and then I will post.

I can’t believe April 10^th is getting so close. Some days fly by while others seem to drag, but I’m trying to enjoy every moment.