Love Lebron!

The Heat beat the Cavs! Let's just say I am extremely satisfied!

Can't wait to watch the terrific trio in action next week in Salt Lake!!!

My Collection

Ever since my freshman year I have wanted to take Floral Design. Well, so does everyone else, so it's pretty difficult to get a spot unless you're an upper classman and get early registration. Well this semester, I was finally able to get a spot. Here's some of my creations from the semester -

Lab #1 - Designer Wraps

Lab #2 - Glass Cube Designs

Lab #3 - Boutonnieres and Corsages

Lab #4 - Pumpkin Designs

Lab #5 - Everlasting Design (Silk Flowers)

Lab #6 - Hand-tied Bridal Bouquets

Lab #7 - Christmas Centerpieces

If anyone needs flowers done, give me a call and I can help you out and help you get things way cheaper than buying from any other florist.

Our First Thanksgiving

This year will be our first Thanksgiving married, and sadly we are not able to go home and be with our families for the break. But we are so excited to start our own holiday traditions and spend some down time relaxing and having fun just the two of us. I'm a little nervous about having to make Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, but I'm pretty confident I can do it. Plus Brent loves to help out in the kitchen so he will definitely be contributing! We want to have everything that our families typically have at Thanksgiving dinner so we are doing it all!

• Turkey
• My dad's mashed potatoes
• His mom's sweet potatoes
• Stuffing
• Green beans
• Dinner rolls
• Sweet potato biscuits
• Cheesecake Factory pumpkin cheesecake

We are probably going to have enough food in leftovers to last us until we go home for Christmas, but that is fine with us! Brent is also going to play football Thanksgiving morning just like he would at home and I will be there cheering him on. Oh, and we can't wait to get up at 3a.m. the next morning to stand in line at BestBuy to buy our new desktop! We're hoping to get an amazing deal on an extremely fast, high performance computer! Despite the fact that we don't get to be with our families, we are so excited for this Thanksgiving.

Heat Halloween

Brent has been planning our Halloween costumes for this year since last Halloween when he got the idea for it. We weren't exactly sure how well everything would turn out or how people would receive it, but we were both very excited about it!Meet my husband Lebron James! Brent and I are super Lebron fans and couldn't be happier (unlike the rest of the world) that he left the Cavaliers and is now playing for the Miami Heat! This Halloween was our tribute to Lebron and the rest of the dynamic trio! We even made the Heat the theme for our Trunk-or-Treat trunk decorations. We even had a basketball court and hoop for the kids to take a shot, and if they made it, they got an extra piece of candy. They all loved it until it started to downpour and even hail! But it was fun while it lasted!

BYU Homecoming

Since it's my last year at BYU, I wanted to take advantage of every opportunity to participate in BYU events. Mainly I wanted to dress up all fancy and have Brent take me on lots of romantic dates! So for Homecoming, BYU had a dance at the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. It was really cool because they rented out the whole place, so we could walk around and look at all the cool fish and animals when we needed a break from dancing.Brent turns into such a little kid when we go to places where there or animals, whether it's the zoo, dinosaur museums, or aquariums, he loves them!
We had a lot of fun dancing too! I usually have a very hard time getting Brent to break out of his shell and have some fun on the dance floor, but even he was having fun! It was probably because of the tide pool exhibit that was right next to the dance floor that had sting rays that were seriously trying to jump out! It kept him entertained. :)
Overall it was a very fun, romantic night for the two of us together. I'm really glad we went and I hope we can do a lot more of the fun things BYU has to offer in my time left here. I think Brent may even be able to convince me to join a intramural coed volleyball team...

Achilles and Calypso

After going to BYU's homecoming dance at the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy, we really wanted to get some fish! So, the next day after Brent's flag football game, we headed to PetSmart to buy our beautiful children! Sadly, I didn't get around to posting this until after Calypso, the blue and orange one, died this morning :(We're not exactly sure what happened, but towards the beginning of this week, they both looked like they had some kind of film coating their whole bodies. When we looked at the top of the water it looked like there was oil on the surface...strange. We were sad to have to flush Calypso down the toilet this morning, but we're hoping Achilles can hold on and live a little longer.

Living in the Moment

Recently I've realized that I always have this problem of wishing for the future. Rather than just being content with what I have, I want more. I'm just so excited for things that are coming that I want them to hurry up and get here. For example, I can't wait until next semester! I'm going to have an easy course load, be working at an amazing internship, and it is my last semester at BYU. Yet, I know that once next semester is actually here, I'll be saying that I can't wait to graduate and be done with school! It's just a continuous cycle of wanting what's next. Brent's been getting a little annoyed with me always wanting more and hearing me say things like this and has been trying to get me to see how good we have it now.

Well, today while I was walking home today after a great workout at the track, I had an interesting experience. I was in a really good mood from all the endorphins, the weather was perfect, I was listening to some great music from Glee, and as I looked around at the changing colors of the leaves falling all around me, I couldn't help but realize how great my life is right now. At that moment, absolutely everything in my life was perfect. I knew that my wonderful husband would be waiting for me at home with a hug and a kiss. I knew that I didn't have any pressing school assignments that needed to be done this weekend. I knew that I have a wonderful family that loves me. As I was thinking all of these things, I realized that in a few years when I've got 4 kids and Brent is working all the time at a top engineering firm and I'm so stressed from managing our home, I am going to look back and wish for this day. Instead of wishing for what's next, I will be missing the moment that I am in right now. So now I have a new outlook on the rest of my time here at BYU and the rest of Brent and I's time with just the two of us.

Our Summer

It has been way too long since I have updated our blog. Mainly because we have just been so busy having an amazing summer! I can't even begin to talk about everything that has happened over the last few months, but here are some of the big things.

First off, we bought a car!

This is our beautiful new 2010 Mitsubishi Lancer! This was Brent's dream car and he couldn't be happier to now have a brand new car all his own. It has also really helped us out having 2 cars. We couldn't have survived our summer jobs without them both.

Second, we moved to Ocean City for the summer to make lots of money! Well, atleast that's what our intent was. After applying to every single restaurant in the whole city, we only heard back from one place - Dead Freddie's Island Grill on 64th Street.

It must have been fate because we drove by at just the right time. They weren't even open yet because this was their first summer in business. Brent went in to see if anyone was there and a construction worker gave him an application and told him to come back the next day when a manager would be there. So that's what we did! A few days later we heard back from them and they wanted to hire us. Only thing was, we were planning to be servers because that's how you make money in Ocean City. But we didn't have any serving experience. So they said they would hire me as a hostess and Brent as a food runner to start out, and if we could prove that we were good enough, they would make us servers by July. Well, it didn't take us long to impress them. We were both serving by mid June, making on average $100 a night in tips. It was exactly what we had hoped for!

The only bad part about living at the beach was that I didn't get to see much of my family. It was really hard on me being away from my nieces and nephews for so long, especially since I'm already away from them all school year. But we did get to spend a few very fun days at Raystown Lake with my family just before heading back to Utah.

Since we now had 2 cars, the only way for us to take both back to Utah was to have someone drive with us. Since Brent's parents have never been out to visit BYU, we thought this would be a great opportunity for them to come. After making the long, miserable drive, we got to spend 4 days showing them all around Provo. We literally took them to do everything! We hiked the Y, toured campus, ate at the Creamery and Tucanos, and they helped us move into our apartment. It was a really fun trip and they were a huge help getting us moved in.

It was a great summer, but we are very happy to be back in Provo living on our own again. We couldn't be happier with our new apartment! It is so close to campus and has absolutely everything we need for a way better price than our old apartment. It's my last year at BYU, so we're hoping to do some really fun stuff to make the most of it.

KitchenAid

Last semester I took a cooking class to prepare for married life. It was such a fun class and I recommend it to anyone who has a chance to take it while at BYU. Sister Smith is a genius! Anyways, in the cooking labs they have a KitchenAid mixer at every station. I had never used one before, but during our weekly 3 hour cooking labs, I fell in love! These things are amazing! I knew I wanted one but there was no way Brent and I could afford one or that anyone was going to get one for us as a wedding gift. But we registered for one anyways, which was a great idea. Well, a couple weeks ago we went to Kohl's to complete our registry with a 15% off coupon they gave us. We got everything we needed and still had $170 left in gift cards! Turns out Kohl's had their KitchenAid's on sale for $299 instead their normal $350. Plus we saw that KitchenAid was offering a $30 rebate on their mixers. So Brent said, "Babe, I think we can get your KitchenAid!" I was sooo excited!! We had to order it online so that I could get the pretty color I wanted and the nice people at Kohl's let us use our 15% coupon again online. So we ended up only paying about $60 of our own money for it! When it came I was so excited that I hurried up and found an awesome cookie recipe and we made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies in it for Family Home Evening. Brent said they were the best cookies he has ever had. Isn't it so beautiful!?

Dreaming of Summer

I just had to change my blog background to something warmer to remind me that warm weather does still exist. We've been getting short little teases of warm weather lately, but they never last. This past Monday it was so nice! The sun was shining and it was warm enough that I could walk around campus without a jacket. But by the time I came out of work at 5, the wind was blowing like crazy and the temperature had dropped 10 degrees! It's no fun! And today, Brent and I left the Wilk to go to work and stepped outside into blizzard conditions! Snow was blowing around everywhere and it was so cold! I am so ready for summer! The thought of wearing capris and flip flops every day makes me so happy! And the best part is that I know that in only 3 1/2 weeks, Brent and I will be heading home for the summer and living in Ocean City for 3 months!!!

Short-lived Snowboarding Career

So before I tell about my accident, I have to talk about my first-ever snowboarding experience. It all started when Brent and I walked into Sam's Club one day and they had a display of snowboards with bindings for only $107. Sure enough, they were the perfect length for me! But we figured we should shop around a little more to make sure we were getting the best deal. We went to Big 5 Sporting Goods and found out they were having a deal for any snowboard, bindings, and boots for $193. So then we got the idea that maybe we should get Brent a new board, which he was due for, and I could take his old one. Then we could buy me the bindings and boots that I would need. So that's what we did! Brent got a brand new snowboard and took his old bindings off of the old board and put them on his new one, while I got the old board and bought some new bindings and boots. We were all set to take me on my first snowboarding lesson! I was really scared though! Brent was pretty sure that I would completely fail and hate it, and it seemed that's how it would be from how I started out. It took us 2 hours to make the first run, but luckily by the second one I was doing much better and was much more comfortable with making turns. But trust me, I still fell A LOT!

I ended up having a lot of fun and I was ready to get back on the mountain and try again the next weekend. So that's what we did! I got off of work at 3:30 on Friday so we could go up to Sundance and use our night passes. We had everything all packed in the car ready to go straight from campus. Our first run was awesome! I actually expected my self to regress back to my old habits and do worse, but I actually was doing so much better than the first time! It was lots of fun and I felt like maybe I could let Brent go up further while I went on my own. Luckily, he decided he would do one more run with me on the easier slope.

When we were getting off the lift (which is the one thing I haven't gotten better at. I fall every time) somehow I fell and my board twisted back behind me and twisted my knee. Brent just kept going, not knowing that anything was wrong, while I sat there crying with my knee twisted behind me. I managed to crawl over to the side to get out of anyone's way getting of the lift and Brent finally noticed I was still on the ground. He kept saying "you're fine, you're still laughing!" I yelled at him "I'm not laughing, I'm crying!" Then he finally realized something was wrong. My board was still twisted around pulling on my knee which was making the pain worse, so Brent took it off since I couldn't pull it around myself. We walked over to a bench and sat down. The lift attendant asked if she wanted us to call ski patrol, but I told her no, I would be fine. I thought for sure the pain would go away and I could make it down. But as I sat there, the pain got even worse. I walked around on it for a little bit, which seemed to be ok, but when I sat back down it hurt even more. Finally we decided that I should try to go down if it could hurt it even more. Mainly I didn't want to call ski patrol because I was too embarrassed. But, I got to take my first ride on a snowmobile! And they gave us free lift tickets since we had only gotten one run in.

We went home and I sat down on the couch and put an ice packet on my knee for about 3 hours. Sleeping that night was kind of difficult. Everytime I wanted to roll over I had to be super careful not to twist my knee at all. In the morning it was really stiff and took me a while to be able to put any weight on it. We went to the Health Center first thing to have it looked at. I was really worried that it was worse than I thought and that I might need surgery, since my old roommate Natalie had to have surgery on her knee freshman year. After doing a few tests to find out what exactly was hurt in my knee, the doctor said it's just a sprain. He didn't tell me exactly what was sprained, but that I was lucky it wasn't affecting my miniscus in any way. They gave me a brace to wear for the next 6 weeks and I have to be really careful for a while. I can't run for atleast 2 weeks probably and even then I have to cut my distance back. Oh yeah, and he said no more snowboarding this year.

So of course, just as I started to get good and was really having fun, I get told I can't do it anymore. Hopefully I'll be able to ignore any fear next year and get back to it.

Our First Home

Mom has been bugging me to post pictures of our apartment so she can see what it looks like, so here it is. We moved into The Boulders in the beginning of January. On our first night there, we had just flown in from Pennsylvania and it was really late at night, so we didn't have time to move in anything. We hadn't even bought our bed yet! So, we spent our first night in the apartment on the floor with only some blankets and our pillows. Ahh, the fun that comes with being newlyweds! But we managed to get everything moved into the apartment the next day, including our bed and couch. Unpacking everything, however, probably took us 2 weeks. We love our apartment! It is perfect for us, but we hate the location. We are so far away from campus which makes us spend lots of money on gas to drive to school. It's also in a very dangerous part of Provo. We live with a lot of scary people! But we keep our door locked all the time and never really go outside other than to get the mail and get in the car. It's alright for now, but we definitely plan to live somewhere else when we come back in the Fall.

I love this pantry! It is sooo huge and perfect!