David Archuleta & The Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Last night was the concert with David Archuleta and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It was awesome! We left around 3 p.m. to head downtown and spent the whole afternoon there. We went shopping at Gateway, spent some time at the Salt Lake library, and then walked around Temple Square to look at the lights before heading to the concert. The concert was absolutely amazing....it really got us into the Christmas spirit! I can't wait for the CD to come out next year, because David's rendition of Silent Night was beautiful. I was really impressed with all the music! After the concert we went to dinner at Olive Garden and just enjoyed walking around downtown. It was such a great day!

Cupcakes = Love

Anyone who knows me knows I love love love to bake...especially cupcakes! I am not as good as those bakers on TV or the people who work at Sprinkles, but I still try to keep up! I got the idea for this cupcake Christmas tree from my aunt, and I think it turned out pretty good. They're red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting....which made John very happy since those are his favorite! Too bad I'm taking the tree to my work party (but don't worry--I saved six cupcakes just for John).

This week is the week of Christmas parties for us. We had my company party last weekend, but this week there's my department's party, the Valley Journals newspaper party, and Monavie's party. We are also going to see David Archuleta perform with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on Saturday. I can't wait to get the parties started....literally! And after this week...there's only one week left until our first Christmas together! Yay!

Oh yeah, one last exciting thing...John now officially has his associate's degree! I am so proud of him! He worked really hard to get to this point, and in 22 months he will have his bachelor's degree. I'll post a picture of him with his diploma when it comes in the mail. :)

Thanksgiving & Our First Christmas Tree!

John and I put up our Christmas tree this weekend! It's always been a tradition in my family to put up the Christmas decor the weekend after Thanksgiving, so I decided to keep that tradition because I love Christmas and want to have the decorations up for as long as I can. We don't have a lot of ornaments (thank goodness for Dollar Tree), but I think our tree turned out pretty cute considering what we had to work with! We also decorated the rest of our apartment and put up decorations outside.

Anyway...here's the tree:


And here's the super cute ornament John's mom got for us to commemorate our first Christmas together:



Our Thanksgiving weekend was a lot of fun. We went to the Homestead Resort up in Heber with John's parents for Thanksgiving dinner and then played games and hung out. Then Thursday night my little brother came and stayed with us so we could go Black Friday shopping. We went everywhere...Wal-Mart, Old Navy, Macy's, JC Penney, Famous Footwear, etc., and got some awesome deals. I'm mostly excited about our new vacuum (weird how things you get excited about changes when you get married!) that we only paid $35 for...but it's so nice! We also got John some luggage, new clothes, slippers, a video game, and some movies. John also bought me most of my Christmas, which was clothes and shoes. I desperately needed winter shoes after living in St. George for 4 years and wearing flip flops all winter there!

Anyway, it was a wonderful weekend and we are very grateful for all we have! We got to spend great time with family, each other and get ready for Christmas too! :)

The Armstrong Mansion

So this first picture doesn't have to do with the mansion...it's just a pic of my new hair. It's kind of hard to see a difference in this picture, but it's definitely a change. I really like it!

John and Me :)

The outside of the mansion.

Me sitting in our awesome room!

Halloween 2010, Etc.

Above: Halloween at Nelson Labs! These are some of the girls in my department! Ashley, Me, Becky and Brittney!

So John and I both weren't in the mood for Halloween this year. I'm not really sure why....I think it might be because we are both so excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas that we just wanted to bypass Halloween. Haha. We didn't dress up or stay home to pass out candy, but I did end up having to dress up for work the Friday before which was pretty fun (see above). Instead we spent the weekend at the Armstrong Mansion, which is a B&B in downtown Salt Lake. We had an awesome room and it was a lot of fun. I will post some pics of the place later.

Other than that, there is not much new going on. We bought our first Christmas tree--it was only $35 at Wal-Mart, but it looks a lot nicer than what we paid for it. And it's even prelit, which I think is awesome! I can't wait until we can put it up! In other news, I changed my hair and now it's more red than it was naturally, but I really like it and will probably keep it this way for a while. And as for John, he is busy finishing up his associate's degree and will have his diploma at the end of this month! I'm so excited for him...he's halfway done!

Life Lately

It has been a long time since I posted anything! John and I have been so busy lately that it's been hard to find time. We have been out of town the last few weekends and have kept busy every night after work, so it's been tough to find free time. Anyway...I already posted about our camp trip, but we have also done a few other fun things since I last posted. Last weekend we went down to St. George to visit my family and friends. It was a lot of fun. We needed a mini-vacation (like we don't get enough of those...haha), and I really miss St. George so it was fun to go "home" for a few days.

Like usual on road trips, I didn't take many pictures...but I did get a few of this really cool rainbow that we got to see on our way home!

Also, a few weekends ago we had a football party at our house. John and his family are from Texas, and Texas and Texas Tech (the universities) were playing against each other, so we got together to watch the game.

We made a lot of snacks! I spent the whole night before preparing. It was a lot of fun to try out all these recipes...thank goodness I have two aunts who are great cooks and like to host parties, because pretty much everything I made was

from our family cookbook filled with their recipes!

Camping!

A couple of weekends ago John and I went on our first camping trip as a married couple...and it was a blast! We had a great time hanging around the camp site, eating lots of good food, hiking, and watching the wildlife. It was nice to get to go before it started to get too cold, even though it was still freezing at night! We can't wait until next year so we can camp a lot more. We went up to Big Cottonwood Canyon and stayed at the Spruces campground.

Our little chipmunk friend...he would come up and eat peanuts right out of our hand!


This bluejay was hanging around the campsite all day one day...waiting for us to drop food, haha.

John and I hiking up to Twin Lakes (a three mile hike...it was intense!)

Twin Lakes!

This is Silver Lake...we could see it about halfway up the mountain on our hike to Twin Lakes.

John and Silver Lake

Roasting hot dogs!

Home on the Range (in Wyoming)

Unfortunately I won't have any pictures for this post because for some reason I didn't use my camera once while we were on vacation! I don't know what I was thinking! But anyway, we decided that since John hadn't really been able to meet my grandparents who live in Wyoming until our wedding day, we'd go visit them for Labor Day weekend. We both took a day off work and headed out to the country!

We had a really great time. John got to hang out with Grandpa a lot and see all of his guns/fishing gear/tools/etc. I spent a lot of time with my Grandma working on my wedding scrapbook. She is an amazing scrapbooker and had most of it done when we got there, but we added in some more things having to do with the honeymoon, bridal showers, etc. It was so much fun and I am so glad I have an album that has everything in it from the time we got engaged until now.

We also visited some museums, went on some drives around the area, and John got to see all the antelope which really made him want to go hunting (too bad it's like $300 for an out of state hunting license!). Maybe we'll plan to do that next year!

My grandparents also gave us ALL of their camping gear, which was in great condition because it's been hardly used! We went through all of it this last weekend and now have everything we need to go camping. We're going in a couple of weekends and can't wait--it's our last chance before it starts to get too cold!

After our camp trip, we'll be heading down to St. George again for my cousin's birthday party and to visit family & friends. Our weekends are always busy and full of road trips these days but we love it and wouldn't have it any other way! We love being able to travel together all the time!

The Great Outdoors

Big Cottonwood Canyon

If you look really hard, you can see a little slice of the road way down below...

John and I went hiking a couple of weeks ago. We meant to hike to a waterfall up Big Cottonwood Canyon, but somehow just ended up on top of a mountain-- you know men (they never stop for directions or to look at a map!). Haha. But we ended up having a great time anyway and we plan on really finding the waterfall the next time we go hiking. It was nice to just get outside and see nature!

THE ZOO!

For my company's summer party they paid for everyone and their families to go to the zoo, which was awesome! John and I have been talking about going to the zoo all summer so it was reallly exciting when we found out that's where my company party would be. They rented out the whole zoo so it wasn't crowded at all and they had a delicious catered dinner for us. It was a great night!

John standing underneath a tiger!

We got super close to these giraffes...they were almost leaning over the fence!

Penguins!

Zuri's (the baby elephant) mom!

Zuri! She was super cute and entertaining to watch!

Family Game Night

Last weekend we had a game night with my brother and sister. It was their last free weekend before school started so we thought we'd try to do something fun to celebrate their last days of freedom. We had dinner (and I even made a vegetarian dish for my sister) and then we played Clue. That was a lot of fun, but things didn't get crazy until we started playing Guesstures, as you can see from the photos/videos!

Fried Plantains & Other News

Lately I have been experimenting A TON with new recipes, so when my grandma gave us some extra fruits and veggies she had and there was a plantain among them, I decided to look up some recipes and see what we could do with it! I found a really good/simple one for making a plantain into a sweet treat for dessert, and all you need is oil, sugar and cinnamon!

First you slice the plantain into small pieces

Then you fry them in oil for about 6-8 minutes, or until carmelized

After the plantains are done frying, put them on a plate with a paper towel. Next, sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top of the plantains.

They should look like this!

Finally, enjoy!

When you're all done eating, your plate should look like this!

In other news, John and I have been super busy now that I'm working. I don't have all the free time I did before to clean, cook and run all the errands, so we've had to do a little adjusting but it's been very fun. We get to do everything together now which is way better anyway! We have made time to have a lot of fun too, though.

Last Thursday we went to the free concert in the park in Salt Lake with John's friends Cody & Taylor. It was a blast! The artist there was Matisyahu--a Jewish reggae/rap artist. I've only heard one of his songs, but it was a lot of fun! We plan to all go to the rest of the concerts this summer which I'm really excited for!

This last weekend was fun as well. We went to the Salt Lake County Fair with John's mom and got lots of freebies and had lunch. We hung out with John's friend from work and his wife who are both from Sri Lanka. It was so much fun to talk to them about their culture and see how much things differ! And we had Sunday dinner with my grandparents which is always fun because my grandma is a great cook.

We are finally starting to feel completely, 100 percent settled in. Life is good!

My First Day!

Today was my first day at Nelson Labs. It was such a great day, and I am so excited to be working for such an awesome company. We were served breakfast from Great Harvest and then had a catered lunch with the CEO and founder of the company....and that's just the food! I know I am really going to like this job.

Since today was my first day, John thought it would be funny to take a "first day" picture before I left for work. That explains why I look like a first grader headed off to her first day of school in the pic...haha. But it's great that I have such an awesome husband who supports me in my career decisions. I think he is more excited that I started work today than I am!

Counting Our Blessings

Lately I have been thinking about how blessed John and I are. As most married couples know, when you are first married you are dirt poor! This is no exception for me and John. As of right now we have enough to pay all of our bills and buy food and gas, but when it comes to using money to have any kind of fun, that is just out of question.

But we're not complaining. We have had to be creative when it comes to going on dates or finding something fun to do on the weekends. Thank goodness we live in a great area! Our apartment complex has a pool and hot tub, and all through the area are several ponds and streams with lots of ducks in them to feed. We recently signed up for Netflix (a free trial) and have been using that to our advantage to have plenty of movie nights!

Luckily, I've been able to get two jobs within the last month that will really help us out. I start my main job at Nelson Labs next week where I will be a reporting specialist. I'm not sure what all my job duties are, but I just know I am writing reports for clients.

And I started my second job this week. I'm a reporter for the Valley Journals, and I am covering the Kearns area. I have already met a lot of great people and feel like I've been really involved in the community. Tonight I covered the Kearns Night Out on Crime, and although it was raining the whole time, I had fun shooting pictures of the police officers and firefighters. I don't really need a second job, but I love writing and journalism. I know this will be a great way to keep up the skills I learned in college and may even be the doorway to more journalism opportunities for me in the future.

As for John, he has been busy working (sometimes 50 hours a week!) and attending school. He is set to receive his associate's degree in November. I am so excited/proud of him because of how hard he is working. He is taking a really difficult math class (can you tell from the pic below??) that I can't help him with at all, yet he is still keeping a positive attitude.

We are really blessed for everything that has happened lately. The timing of receiving my jobs was perfect, and the community we live in is great for people who don't have lots of money to spend on fun! We are so grateful!

Jumping on the Bandwagon

So now that we're married, I think it's an unwritten rule that we are supposed to have a blog for our friends and family to keep tabs on us. I don't know if anyone will actually read our blog, but I thought we might as well start one up for at least our own sake to help us remember all of our good times together. I'll try to stay dedicated and post at least once a week! Wish me luck!