First Married Apartment

The other night when we started packing I was feeling a little bit wistful about our first married apartment and all of the good times that we have had here for the last two years, so we decided to take some pictures to remember it by, before it got covered in boxes!

Our  Bedroom
This was after we packed the books which is why the bookshelf
is empty.

The other side of our room. As you can see this is where I usually get ready
due to lack of space in the bathroom. :)

The Bathroom view from the doorway

Bathroom from the other side. See what I mean about lack of space!
I usually have to stick my hair dryer in the sink while I'm drying my
hair cause there's not enough counter for it to fit on!

The kitchen. We decided gas stoves are good but gas ovens
are not so good. Everything gets unevenly, overcooked!

The family room. It's big so we like that but the carpet is very
old so we didn't like that so much.

Other side of the family room. We had to replace our big
TV with a little one after Darren took the big one.

Picture wall! We only have pictures of ourselves and a
few my mom gave us for decoration.

End of Semester Craziness

Well, it looks like the next two weeks are going to be a little bit crazier than I anticipated! It's kind of a weird finals week because they start on Saturday and then basically end next Wednesday. Ryan says that there is a half day on Thursday scheduled but a lot of the finals end before that. His two religion finals both end on Tuesday. Usually we get a solid five full days for finals so that is going to be a little crazy! On top of that we have a new apartment that we will be moving into which will probably be finished the first week of May. We're hoping for sooner but we think it's good to expect the later date so that we don't get disappointed. Anyways, we put our contract up for sale two days ago and we think it might have already sold! The only problem is that the people want to move in next Saturday and so that means we have to be out probably by Thursday and then we have to deep clean the whole apartment, and we'll have to live in my sister's spare room for a couple of weeks while our apartment is getting finished!

 So, needless to say our life just got a whole lot crazier. I've started packing a little bit. I think that when you start packing you realize how much more you have to do. It's a little discouraging, and moving is more bittersweet than I anticipated, but we are excited for all these new developments in our lives. Hopefully, after next week it will be a little less stressful! 

Fitness Goals

Ryan and I decided it was high time we shed our winter coats (i.e. a couple extra pounds mostly brought on by ice cream sandwiches) and get into swimsuit shape! We have season tickets to seven peaks and a family Lake Powell trip so lets just say we have motivation, and just to give us some extra I'm writing them down. They say it's always better to write down your goals.

Goals
 Ryan wants to lose five pounds of cushion and then put on ten pounds of muscle.  At least I think that's what they are feel free to correct me babe!
My goal is to lose 5-10 pounds and get toned focusing on my legs, booty, and stomach, and look good in a swimsuit by the previously aforementioned Lake Powell trip.

Plan of Action
Gym 3 times a week for about an hour
Weight training/toning exercise circuits
20 Minutes Cardio minimum

Anyways, Ryan designed some exercises for me, mostly squats, lunges etc. that he found on bodybuilding.com which will hopefully tone up my legs, and butt, and in between I do planks, and various stomach exercises for my abs. Then I do cardio. I heard somewhere it's better to do weights before cardio so that's what I've been doing and my legs are extremely sore so I think it's working so far! Ryan does a bunch of upper body stuff mostly I don't really know what he does but he says he's pretty sore so it's probably good stuff. Wish us luck!

St. George Parade of Homes/Spring Break/Pic dump

Split Rock one of the coolest houses we saw!

Back view of split rock

Glass wall

We saw tons of houses with flat roofs like this one

The three windows. Always three little windows in the master.

The "Cave Shower" no door just your own little shower cave.

Hidden Pantry. Objects may be larger than they appear

Seemingly overflowing pools

Can't decide wood or tile? Put them together and Voila!

Little candle nooks to create some great bath time ambiance!

What Curtis calls a Frank Lloyd Wright esq entertainment center.

Nooks with lights in them!

This year we decided to take our life into our own hands and created our own Spring Break. Every year my sister and her husband go to the Parade of Homes in St. George, and this year they invited us to come with them. We decided we would go with them and it would be our own personal spring break. It was great! We looked at really cool homes all day, and went swimming and hot tubbing in the hotel pool at night. It was just the break we needed and it's also a great place to get ideas of some of the things you might want to do in your own house and figure out what you both like. These pics are just a few of the hundred and fifty that I took so be grateful there aren't more!

January Craziness

So you know how after Christmas there is always a little bit of a let down because you have spent so much time preparing for it and now it's just over? Well in our family there's not much of that, and if there is it only lasts for about a day. We're just too busy! You see, late December and January is probably the craziest time of the year for us. My mom and dad's anniversary which they always insist is a family event (Don't ask me I know it's weird but we've pretty much given up trying to convince them otherwise.) is right after Christmas followed by our niece Sabrina's birthday. January starts out with Brielle's birthday, then my Dad's, then his Dad's, then mine, and a week later Ryan and Jeffrey's on the same day. It's a little crazy and it makes us a lot broke.

This year we decided that we'd just have a family dinner on our actual birthdays and then combine our birthday celebrations with each other. We signed up for their birthday thing at The Roof, the restaurant in Salt Lake City where we got engaged so it kind of has special meaning for us especially around the winter time of year, and got a buy one get one free card. It just so happened that by a funny coincidence Rachael and Nick had two of those, also. They gave one to Rebecca and Blaine because they couldn't use both at once and we all went out together. We got to get all dressed up because it's kind of a nicer restaurant, which is fun to do once in a while. We were kind of running late and it was a blizzard on the way up so we were booking it down the freeway at high speeds and we couldn't see a thing! It was a little nerve wracking. When we got there we had to run through all the snow and slush, and get all soaked, only to find out that there's a convenient little underground tunnel that leads from the parking to the restaurant. It was quite the experience but once we got there it was all worth it! Pics will be added once Wil get's home and figures out what the heck is going on with this computer.

Right outside the Roof

Rebecca and Blaine

Us again!

Rachael and Nick

New Year's with the Fam

This year we've been spending a lot of holidays in Utah so we decided to go up to Idaho to ring in the New Year with the other side of the family. Ryan's parents and Josh also came up so it was almost the entire family! The sad part of this story is that we brought our camera but managed to leave the card at home so we were only able to get a couple pictures.  There were TONS of arts and crafts style houses there and I really wanted to take pictures of them and show them to Dad as paint options, but, oh well. We had tons of fun anyways, though!

We got there on Thursday night, then on Friday we watched the armed forces bowl game. I usually like football but I hated that game for most of it. Our offense just couldn't get it together. Thankfully our defense held them off til we finally scored some points.

 On Saturday Tyler and Aimee took us to some model homes because they know we are obsessed with going through houses, then we went to a super yummy frozen yogurt shop! They had tons of flavors and they charge by weight so you could get as many mix ins as you wanted! We ate haystacks for dinner, which were also really yummy, got Mom, Dad and Josh from the airport, and then had a New Years Eve party. We made sure there were lots of snacks cause New Years Eve just isn't any fun without snacks and Martinelli's. I made my first seven layer dip and I think that it turned out pretty well.

On Sunday we went to Church and exchanged gifts. It was like Christmas all over again. Ryan and I got very spoiled. We feel so grateful to have such a generous family, and also a little bit sheepish that we didn't get them more presents. We are very poor college students and that is pretty much our excuse that we are sticking to. I think the most exiting present for Ryan was a bread maker. Even I have to admit it's pretty cool and he loves it. I got tons of fun things also including new books, pjs, bathrobe, a red coat, a new scarf, jewelry, and a full length mirror! I can finally see my lower half! It's also a great place to do my hair because I can actually see all of it!

Monday was pretty relaxed but we did go to breakfast at a really yummy place near Tyler and Aimee's house and then on Tuesday we went swimming for a while, ate pizza, and then drove home. I don't think that Mom and Dad have ever had stuffed pizza before because they were pretty surprised at how big an actual piece was. Josh was a little angry by the end there. One time his Dad bumped into him and he sad "Ouch! Dad! You hit me right in the boob!". His Dad then informed him that men have a chest, not boobs.

Talli demonstrating her spelling skills.

Little Danny was really smiley