As I have been at work today I keep thinking about my two youngest siblings, each having just started back to school at new schools, and two other brothers starting up at BYU today. I have had a weird feeling and finally realized that it must be because this is the first fall in 17 years that I have not been heading back to school as well. It is kind of a strange realization. I guess without school though I am experiencing even bigger and better things.

Good luck to everyone who is heading back to school!

22

My birthday was a week ago and it was fabulous.

Colby took me to Johnny Carino's, my favorite restaurant and had a small surprise party for me at a local ice cream place. My friend Courtney did most of the planning and it was just great. Thanks Courtney! My friends all pitched in to get me a gift certificate for a pedicure (much needed) and Colby gave me a gift card for a massage (also much needed/wanted). Haven't had the pedicure yet, but I had my hour long massage this week and it was fantastic. Too bad it was the fastest hour of my life. If only work could go by that quickly.

Thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate with flowers, cards, phone calls, hugs, and facebook messages! It all meant the world to me!

I am so grateful to all of the people who have been a part of my life. I am who I am today because of each of the people I have met. Can't wait to live this next year of life and see what surprises it brings!!

Enjoy some pics from the day.

One year

I can hardly believe it has already been a year.

I have loved all 31,556,926 seconds of it.

Not one of those seconds goes by that I don't feel like the luckiest girl in the world, married to such an amazing, let alone good lookin' man.

I love you Colby!

xoxo

now I believe it

I thought our handy-dandy weather forecaster fx had to be out of whack this morning when I saw this same symbol on the screen at 8:00 am predicting "Strong PM t-storms." The beautiful, blue, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky could not turn to storms--so I thought.


Now I believe it. After a quick run into wal-mart to print some photos and grab a few goods I believed it. I stood at the exit to wal-mart trying to see my car through the sheets of rain, parked only 10 stalls back. I ran as fast as I could and only had to stop once to pick up the canned tomatoes that broke through my bag.

I was SOAKED.

We are talking jumped-into-the-pool-with-clothes-on soaked (which I almost did 3 hours ago after work because it was so beautiful out...in my bathing suit though...). Now here I am--a true believer in my trusty weather forecaster fx.

couponing

--that word that has become so common these days. I had a friend get me started on this and now I understand why everyone is talking about "couponing."

Check out my great buy!

The checkout lady rang everything up and the total read "$18.22."

But then I gave her my stack of coupons (combo of target coupons and manufactures') and the total dropped to $2.69

cha-ching!!!


(when I came home and showed Colby he thought is was great, but teased me saying he had to get a picture of all this and post it on the blog. well I thought it was a grand idea and did so myself. thanks for the idea babe.)

birthday photo journal

check out all those candles!


birthday nap after church

presents :)

fire hazard


mmm . . .

notice half of the back piece of cookie dough is missing . . .

the culprit. but hey, i guess it was his cake so I couldn't get mad.

pedicure! Yes, this can be a manly thing. he LOVED it.

not pictured...our sunday afternoon bikeride!

celebration!

Today is the day I am celebrating the birth of my wonderful husband Colby. I could not have married anyone more perfect for me. We spent a weekend away in Branson with some friends and I was reminded once again how much I love forgetting about everything and just being with him. He seems to always know just the right things to say and do. I know he loves me because of how he treats me. I am so blessed to have him in my life.

Happy birthday Colby!

Hope your 26th birthday and following year brings all you hoped for and more.

I love you!

good ol' craigslist

Lately I have been spending a lot of time on craigslist looking for a decent used piano. I took lessons growing up, but haven't had the chance to seriously play in several years. I think it was after hearing Jon Schmidt's "Love Story meets Viva la Vida" that I became determined to relearn how to play. I have found several free ones--but they are usually free for a reason--a few outrageously priced grand pianos, and a few great deals that go too quickly. But while searching for pianos I have found the craziest ads. This was today's highlight:

"Are you torn with guilt over your shortcomings, but unable to relieve the torment? St. Charon is here to help. We operate a free-to-use, online confessional that puts you just minutes away from priests across the United States, and lets you submit your confessional through the internet and receive forgiveness and comfort from a local priest - without having to leave your home. Visit stcharon.org today, and see how we can help you."

Yes. We live in the Bible belt.

Let's just say I won't be using this free service.

Happy Wednesday!

arkansas friends...

As our rainy season was coming to an end (actually, I don't think it really ever ends...) we found this fun friend. We call him "Jorge," named after the frog I dissected in my 8th grade science class (kinda gruesome, i know, but it is all in love) . This time Jorge is still alive. He comes out of our bushes and greets us on our doorstep nightly.




We have both read children's books with fireflys and heard of them, but never seen them until Arkansas. They are magical! As we drive around at night or dusk we see them dancing in fields. Often it looks like someone has strung a line of twinkling christmas lights. We were determined to catch them and even stayed out until midnight one night to do so. I know, we are really boring. The sad part is we never caught one! They light up for like a second, the go black for 10 or so before they light up again. We could see the light, then they would dissappear into the darkness. The next day we were smarter about this and went out at dusk so we could still see them after the glow went out. We both sucessfully caught one! I swear, we are like little kids. People driving by must think we are crazy.




Our other outdoor friends reside in the pond in the back of our complex. We have about 20 small turtles that we will visit on walks. We really enjoy all the friendly creatures of Arkansas. We haven't met the chiggers yet, and are very grateful for that.

Yes, we are still alive, I just haven't been in that bloggin' mood, you know. My friend M.C. said it best when she said if blogging were a sport, it would have to be a winter sport. I guess I am just so distracted by the great weather and other things to want to sit down on my couch and blog.

Our latest adventures included a trip to Memphis to visit Darren, Brittany and cute Jefferson (Colby' brother and family) which was just wonderful. It was so fun to see you guys and spend the fourth with you. I left from Memphis and flew to California to spend the week with my family at Lake Havasu. The vacation was fabulous, but I missed my other half who was staying home being a grown-up and working. It was one of the few vacations in life where I was just as excited (if not more so) to return home as I was to get to my vacation destination! The biggest reason I haven't posted abotu this yet besides the "not being into blogging right now" issue, is that I don't have a single picture from Havasu. That is so unlike me and it is killing me. Ha. I took TONS of pics, but they were all on my parent's nice camera. They haven't had a chance to send them.

Well, there you have it. I know you were all worried. We are still alive and well.

the claytons

Today one of my best friends, Jessica, is getting mariied in Utah and I am sitting here in Arkansas. I wish so badly that I could be there! I love you Jess and hope this is such a special day for you and Adam; I know it will be. You will look gorgeous, I am sure. Love you!!

K I S S

Colby met these guys (well half of them)

When they weren't wearing any of this

Check it out! Weird, huh?

never been a morning person

Thomas Edison once said, "you can often gauge a man's ambition by whether he hates his alarm clock or considers it his best friend." Well, I definately fall in the "Hate his alarm clock" category, but I have seen/heard of some pretty ingenioius alarm clocks. Found these today--maybe I should invest in one, or all :-/

"This alarm clock doesn’t just make noise, it breaks the snooze-button habit: after the first snooze period, Clocky rolls off the nightstand and runs away."

"As soon as you can assemble the four puzzle pieces that are popped up into the air at your predesignated time, the thing will finally shut up. That should be just enough commotion to assure that you won't go drifting back into la-la land."



"The Flying Alarm Clock wakes you up with a loud shrieking alarm coupled with a little propeller-driven key that leaps off your nightstand. To turn off the horrible racket, you have to get out of bed and retrieve the key."



My roommates used to have to suffer through my "inablitity to hear my alarm clock and actually get up" mornings and would joke about buying one of these. We never knew if they were actually real. Well folks, they are.

A year ago today

I constantly find myself reminiscing about the wonderful trip I had to Europe last summer. Today I was curious about what I was doing a year ago, so I pulled out my journal. The entry I found came from one of the most memorable days of the trip;memorable because I had never been so scared in my life. This was the night Rachelle and I traveled into Paris at night to see the Eiffel Tower and Paris Opera house lit up. We saw the lights of each, but missed the RER train back to our tram which took us to our hotel. After taking a different route, waiting for a shuttle that didn't take us back, and hitching a ride with complete strangers at 2 in the morning, we made it to our hotel safely. {whole story here}

All for this picture...

Happy Birthday to me!

...a few months late. :)

For my birthday (way back in August) my parents gave me this wonderful thing...


I was dying to put it on my laptop and start using it, but my laptop has been ridiculously slow. I wanted to wait until I could wipe everything off my little Dell computer and start over. Well today is that blessed day and Lightroom was one of the first programs installed on it.

Dear Humidity,

Please go away. We don't like you very much.

yours truly,

Katie

i'm obsessed

seriously, I just listened to this about 10 times--in a row--see,

I'm obsessed,

but can you blame me?
It's beautiful.




If only I could find a good, inexpensive {free would be fabulous} piano so I could start playing again!

Where we live...aka our house/apartment Part 1

We have had several people wanting to see pictures of our Apartment and for some time we have been planning on posting pictures but now over 4 months since we moved in we finally going to post some. This will be a mult-part post made over a few days so keep checking back to see the rest of our place!

Just to give everyone a reference point this is what you walk into from the front door. Through the window you can see the fireplace.

This is the view of the kitchen from just inside the front doorstep. The door on the left goes out to our patio where in addition to our BBQ Grill there is also another door that goes into the master bedroom. We were glad that there is a bar in this place after all the time and effort we put into making those bar stools for our apartment back in Provo.






Here is just one more picture of our kitchen. We love the granite counter tops, black appliances, and the large area especially in comparison to our student apartment.


This is kind of a bland picture but you can see part of the kitchen but also a portion of the living room.











Here is our dining room. We love the table and chairs that we got from Katie's parents and the windows! There is so much light in our living room because of all the windows; we rarely need to turn on the lights. We have also been growing our own Italian herbs as you can see by some of the pots on the partial wall (Just out the window is Katie's new bike...I am sure she will blog about it in the future).






This picture was taken from our dining area and the hallway leads into all the other rooms. Straight ahead is the office area (with the chair) and the door with the towel on it is the laundry and utility room. Left before the office is the master bedroom entry and a right turn after the entryway is the guest bedroom (YES there is an extra bed in there for whoever wants to come visit).




This post is for my brother Kellen. He had this leather print of the San Diego Temple made for us on his mission. This is right outside the guestroom door. The other door that you see is the coat closet.
Also since we were just in Provo for graduation I wanted to post this picture. I got home from work one night and Katie had already framed them. It is still hard to believe that we have both finished with Bachelors degrees.

This is it for now but stay tuned as I am sure that Katie will be posting more pictures of our place.

The Rest of our Church Site Visits

Here is the rest of the Church sites that we were able to visit. Having never been to these places myself I had no idea what to expect. This is certainly a spirit about these areas and many of them seemed different than I have always imagined after all these years of hearing about them.

So we walked into the visitors center and I kept thinking that it was such a weird design for a building. I kept thinking that we would look at some pictures and hear about the history and then walk down the street and see the jail. It took me until I was sitting there reading about the visitors center to realize that the visitors center is actual built around the jail!


This is a replica of the Liberty jail. It was made from the original rock and it is cut away on the back side so that you can see the thickness of the walls and how it is laid out inside.


This is the front door (The real one is in the RLDS Temple).
Joseph Smith is the feet you see on the left side of the picture. It was such a small amount of space...about the size of the key on the basketball court and the ceiling was too short for anyone to stand up. Needless to say very uncomfortable

Far West is literally in the middle of nowhere! I couldn't help but think about what this area would look like today if the Saints had never left. This site is just off the road and its cut out of some fields. Across the street is a Community of Christ chapel.

This is the monument at Far West, unfortunately the top of it is cut off.

Each of the four corner stones are covered with a glass case and they each are dedicated to something different (lower priesthood, higher priesthood, etc).