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!?