Back to Boise

Well, I promised pictures so here's what has been going on in our lives recently. As I mentioned, we were out in Maryland for a few days after moving our apartment in Provo. It was so great to spend time with my family. I have adorable nieces and nephew!

Here's sweet Ava playing with some little toys. She is so talkative! It was great getting to see their little personalities grow. Ava likes "spooky" things for some reason and often requests this Halloween song about an old lady who lives by a grave yard. Suffice it to say we have that memorized now. She's so funny.

We weren't in Maryland for our anniversary but our cake topper was there so we decided to eat it, as is tradition for the first anniversary. It was... interesting. Kind of freezer burned tasting. Not something I would choose for my normal dessert certainly, but I'm glad we followed the tradition.

Yay! Here we are with the cake! I also recently decided to chop off my hair. It had been long since like 2007 and it was really time for a change.

Look at that smile! Ivy has one of the sweetest little girl voices ever. She is a very sweet little thing and all girl. I wish I'd gotten a picture of Elijah-- he is so smart and loves Lego's. We watched him put together some Lego's that we got him for his birthday and he didn't need any help at all. We hadn't been in the house from the airport even a minute before he was trying to get Bryan to play with him. I'm glad he remembers us and is comfortable with us.

One day we went to IKEA with my mom and Lindsay and Ava. That was a fun trip but boy do your feet hurt after a day there.

Then we flew out to Colorado to watch Ainsley and Avery while Hailey and Brian were in Israel. We did a lot of fun things! One of the first nights we decided to have a picnic in the back yard.

Then they broke out the tether ball. They played this so much while we were there. We also went to the park and watched movies and took them around to all their fun activities.

Speaking of those fun activities, have I mentioned that my niece is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do? Yeah, she's awesome. She can break boards clean in half by kicking them or chopping them.

We got back to Utah and saw a bunch of friends and family before we left. One day we went bowling one day with Shelley and Ella.

Isn't Ella so cute? She's such a sweetheart.

Our friends helped us pack up the U-Haul. Getting this king sized mattress up the stairs was no easy feat but I am sure happy they were able to. I love being able to sprawl out on that bed. It so beats a queen.

Weston likes to climb things... including the contents of our U-Haul.

My mom and dad flew out to Utah to help us move. It was so nice of them! It made the whole process much less expensive (we'd been thinking of putting our stuff on a moving truck for some trucker to drive) and less stressful too.

So, we've moved to Boise! Yay! Once we got here we unloaded and went and bought a couch! No more blow up furniture for us. I haven't taken any pictures of our new place yet because it's just not quite ready. Everything is unpacked but a lot of clothes are still lying on the floor upstairs because we need to buy a dresser. Once that all gets put away, I promise to post pictures. Bryan and I bought smart phones so I might even do a little video tour with that and post it here as well.

We weren't able to get Wifi for ten days once we moved and it was killer. Seriously! I feel much better and more settled now. Bryan seems to be enjoying his job and that makes me very happy. We're glad to be here!

Woops

Where, oh where, has the time gone? My last blog post was in January... much has happened since then! This will be a fairly short post since I don't have a way to upload pictures right now but there will certainly be more to come later with more details specifically having to do with the past couple weeks and the week to come.

My two excuses for not writing more are these: stress and lack of subject matter. This was Bryan's last semester of being an undergrad! We have been relieved and overjoyed to already have a job lined up post-graduation. That was the good part of the semester... I'm not going to lie, it was a rough semester. Bryan had some really hard classes and ended up taking more programming classes than he really ought to. I was working as well, so we were just pretty much up to our knees in stress over getting everything done on time. As such, we didn't have a lot of adventures to write about but we sure have been having some recently!

I am so grateful that this semester is over. I am also extremely grateful for all the prayers that were said on our behalf to help us push through until the end. I have definitely seen God's hand in everything that has happened and know without a doubt that He is aware of our every need and wants so much to bless us. Bless us, He certainly did.

Well, we have officially moved out of our little apartment in Provo. We were out on the 18th (our check out was scheduled during Bryan's last final so I had to finish things up on my own. More stress!) and almost immediately flew to Maryland to spend some time with my family. We stayed with my parents, who also have the Handleys (Lindsay, Morgan, Ava) and the Brownings (Natalie, Ryan, Elijah, Ivy) living with them right now. Whew! What a packed house! I loved being able to see my adorable nieces and nephew and hang out with two of my sisters (both of whom are quite pregnant), their husbands and my parents. We were also able to see Bryan's dad and brother, who are living in Virginia. Bryan beat them both at Risk for the first time in his life so I think we'd say it was a success.

After this, we flew to Colorado, where we now are. My sister, Hailey, and her husband went on a trip to Israel and asked us to babysit their two girls for about a week. We have suddenly gained two elementary school aged girls, a house and a dog! It's nice to get a little practice in. We've been enjoying it a lot!

We also found and signed for a townhouse that we'll be renting in Boise! We're really turning into adults, huh? I guess after 25 years it needed to happen. We will be flying back to Utah on the 4th of May and then my parents will fly out and help us move with a U-Haul to Boise on the 7th! Bryan's first day is the 8th! A lot of exciting things happening now and to happen, so we'll surely post pictures soon.

I guess this post turned out to be a little longer after all! Tomorrow, Bryan and I will celebrate our first anniversary! Wow, has it already/only been a year? It feels like it has flown by but at the same time I feel like we've been married forever. It has been a crazy but great year!

Craft Day

Bryan's mom, Shelley and I have gotten into a fun tradition of having a craft day before most holidays. We switch off each time who hosts the craft day. It's fun to make crafts but the best part is just being able to spend time together. We started this tradition just before Halloween, then again for Christmas and our latest was for Valentine's day. We each made a Valentine Treat Topiary and then frosted sugar cookies and made cute little "cupid's arrows" to give out to friends, visiting teachees, etc.

It was my turn to host this time so everyone made the trek down to Provo. I made Baked Potato Soup for lunch, which was perfect because it was raining and snowing on and off. Nothing like a nice, hot soup to comfort you on a cold day. Bryan's mom and Mike had to drive through a blizzard to both get here and go home! Ella came with Shelley and at one point during the day she took her mom's umbrella out the door and stood on our doormat singing, "Under my Cinderella. Hey! Hey! Hey!" loudly to all the occupants of our complex. It was hilarious and so cute-- I tried to get a video on my camera but by the time I found it she'd pretty much stopped. Isn't that always how it goes? Anyway, we had a very fun day hanging out and doing crafts!

Rings

This week, Bryan and I took our rings in to Wilson Diamond's to get touched up. Bryan's ring has grooves on either edge that had this place thing in it. Well, the black thing popped out a while ago so we decided we needed to get it fixed before our first year of having it was up and before we moved to Boise. Because my ring is white gold, it kind of wears and the back gets a little yellowish. So I went in to get it rhodium plated and cleaned. We took them in on Monday and got them back of Friday. The time we didn't have them was so weird! Bryan was ringless and I had some cheapo fake ring from Walmart that's band was completely coppery by the end of the time. I missed my ring so much and am very glad to have it back! When you're used to something it feels so bizarre to be without it. 

Our First Christmas

Merry Christmas! Happy New Years! Etc, etc. I've noticed a trend in my recent blogging. I only update around important events like holidays. My friend Emily said to me the other day, "I've tried to look at your blog lately but all it ever says is, 'Thanksgiving.'" Oh, woops. Actually, I've heard that from a few other people too... So, I'll try to be a better, more frequent blogger. For now, you get Christmas! I have a ton of pictures here, though, so hopefully it will be satisfying.

Before the Christmas season even started Bryan and I started getting really excited about decorating our own home and starting our own traditions. Little by little, decorations were put up. Here is, for the most part, the end result.

When Bryan was growing up his family did an advent calendar every year, where you open up a little box for each day of December leading up to Christmas day. His mom gave us this nice one, where the things you open are ornaments that you can hang on this tree. It was fun having something special to do each day and taking turns hanging the ornaments.

I had to work up through the 23rd, so Bryan had a week after finals were done of just playing and relaxing during the day. We went up to his mom's that night. We always love going up there and having a break from Provo to spend time with family.

Here we are on Christmas morning, ready to go to church. We hadn't opened presents yet because we were waiting to be able to open them with Shelley, Dustin, Ella and Grandma Marilyn. Shelley and co. arrived soon after church was over (it only lasted 45 minutes!) and so we made the Whitney's traditional Christmas morning breakfast of poached eggs on toasted English muffins with ham, topped with hollandaise sauce.

Once Grandma Marilyn arrived the present opening commenced! Sadly, I realized I didn't get a picture of her.

I had three presents for Bryan and I labeled them 1, 2, and 3 in order of how excited he would be about it. First, I gave him a bag of snickers. He asked for them on his Christmas wish list so who was I to deny him? Next, I gave him a bunch of sauces, as he loves sauces. Finally, I gave him...

The expansion to Pandemic, the board game he got for his birthday and loves. He kept saying something to me about his mom getting it for him and the whole time I'm thinking in my head, "I got you that!"

We snuck Shelley's bread maker out of her house and installed a missing piece. Then we wrapped the whole thing up and gave it to her! We thought it'd be pretty funny for her to unwrap something she already owned.

Here is Ella modeling one of her many princess dresses that she got from Grandma Sandi for Christmas.

As soon as the present wrapping was over, the boys were already on the Wii playing new games they'd received.

Later we played one of our family favorites, Loaded Questions. With seven players it lasted quite a while!

While the adults played games, Ella watched Barbie Nutcracker. When Barbie danced she mimicked her movements like a little ballerina!

I felt like I was taking all the pictures-- I wanted to be in one!

After Christmas Day we just spent time together, playing games and watching fun things like Fear Factor (I would never eat live scorpions, I don't care how much you'd pay me). A while back I taught Bryan's family a fun card game called 'Idiot' that is very addictive. We played that a lot and named a certain family member Idiot of the Year (thought he will contest this). I also made a couple of pies, pictured below.

A few presents I got for Christmas were an apple corer, french rolling pin and pie plate... all were perfect for this apple pie, made entirely from scratch. The recipe is from Our Best Bites, an amazing cooking blog I have previously mentioned.

On Tuesday we flew out to Maryland to spend time with my family and had a bit of a second Christmas. Here are Lindsay and Ava opening our gift to them. This is all I got of the present opening time.

Here is my mom's classic Christmas tree. The tree is so tall that the bow on top is kind of smashed. :)

In our stocking we got a Snickers loaf. Yes, those are apparently real and yes, they are amazing. We enjoyed it immensely.

Here Ivy is using my flat iron. Don't worry, it wasn't plugged in. No children were harmed in the making of this photograph.

My mom made Christmas dinner anew for us! Here is our lovely spread!

Ava is so happy and adorable. She is a joy to be around!

Bryan and I had the opportunity to go to the temple with my parents one night. It was very nice to go back to the place that started it all! We walked around and saw the lights a bit before going in.

Bryan proudly displaying a Thai Book of Mormon in the DC Visitor's Center.

The most important light of all! Almost exactly eight months later, we returned!

Some of us decided to go to DC for the day to see a couple different museums. It was Elijah and Ivy's first trip on the Metro! I think they thought it was pretty neat.

We went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum first for a short while. I was just trying to take a picture of this T-Rex and Bryan happened to walk into it. He called himself a "photo bomber" when I showed him later.

Elijah refuses to turn his head to take a picture with this triceratops.

Ah! Attack of the underwater dinosaurs!

Sweet Ava in the lobby of the building museum.

Playing with the dollhouse in the building zone for kids. There was a cool Lego exhibit we wanted to see but it was kind of expensive. Hopefully an adventure for another day!

Elijah and Ivy playing in the miniature house that was inside of the building zone.

Bryan had just as much, if not more, fun as the kids in the building zone! Here is his robot masterpiece!

Here is the group that went. I had a cute picture of Bryan and Elijah building something together but I couldn't get it off the camera.

Each night we took turns making dinner and cleaning up. One night Ava wanted to help sweep! What a good little helper for mom and dad!

We had a great time this Christmas break visiting family here in Utah and on the east coast. It was kind of sad for it to end. I almost forgot I even had a job! However, it was nice to get home and get back into our normal life. We didn't realize how much we missed our soft bed until we sat on it!

I hope everyone had a great holiday season! Look for more blog posts to come on here and on The Whitney Whisk!