Oh won't you be my neighbor?

For the last few weeks, Derek and I have been FLOORED with how awesome life is.  Here are some great parts about life lately...

1.  We live in the best location in the world.  We're in a cute little neighborhood in the tree streets so it's super close to campus.  Not only that, but we're across the street from the elementary school.  When I walk to school, sometimes we get to join forces with the 3rd graders.  My favorite sight has been a little boy (probably first grade) messing with his jelled-up hair as he walked to make sure it looked perfect.  Precious.  Little kids surround us on this street and they're always up to something fun outside.

Pretty neighborhood!!

2.  Along a similar vein, we have wonderful neighbors.  It's been so fun to come home from school or clinical and chat it up with the ladies on the street and meet their kids.  They are so good to us, too.  The other day Derek and I were working on his grandma's tree (oh!  We live in her basement, by the way) because a bunch of branches fell down in that crazy rain/hail storm.  A man from a couple houses away walked down and, in seeing our meager saw, let us borrow his.  We didn't even know the man but he was so good to us!  Neighbors are the greatest.

3.  Our ward has a garden!  Talk about the best idea ever.   Each week for FHE, a few families in our married student ward sign up to volunteer an hour in the garden. Of course too much is going to grow for just a few people to eat, so anyone in the ward is welcome to it.  It's a few houses up from us so the other night we walked up.  This is what we got:

 FOR FREEEEE!!!

And then we made salsa out of it. :)
[Plus some vinegar, cilantro, salt, other peppers, garlic etc.]

Okay, I know the video is stupid, but it's kind of awesome too, right?  This ninja chop thing is amazing!  Derek told me to see if I can upload it in slow motion.  Hahaha




*Insert a week in here*  We went back a few days after for FHE and learned how to harvest sunflower seeds and then got to take food home.  Not only did we get lots of good stuff  but we were also given some flowers to take home!!!

Okay, ignore the clock still in its package. We're still deciding where things are going to belong :)

One final funny thing--

4.  We have awesome towels.  Super soft, super pretty, gotta love them.  But I'm so glad we wash them separately.  Here's what our lint filter had in it after the wash:

When Derek took this picture he texted me the image with the caption "Somebody shaved Elmo."

Hooray for lint filters.  Double hooray for cleaning them out.

Welp, that's it for now folks!

Honeymoon! Oops, oh wait...I mean Honeypaulson....

On August 23rd, 2013, we were married!  Best. Day. Ever.  Seriously.  Ever since I was in high school,I've always been secretly worried about feeling so anxious, worried, selfish, grumpy, etc. that the wedding day would be a bumpy ride.  Gratefully, it was anything but.  It was amazing to have our family there and so many people we care about.  The weather was (almost) perfect and our windblown hair will only add to the natural effect of the pictures.  And I got to marry Derek, so basically a wonderful day.
I'll post more about the actually wedding day once we've got pictures, but today I'll put up the pictures from our honeymoon!  Our trip was a quick one...just enough to run away before school started again.  And boy, did we need this break.  Derek had been working full time in Riverton and Salt Lake all summer, and I had been working 90 or so hours a week as an EFY counselor.We went to Park City from Saturday to Tuesday, and then up to his Grandpa's ranch for Wednesday.  So much fun.

This is us eating dinner on one of the nights.  We didn't have a table to eat our food at so the ground it was!  

Pretty trees and mountains!

We loved the little shops and stores along main street.  They all have their own look to them, so that was really fun.

Fun little dining areas were outside many of the shops

We grabbed someone to take a picture of us. After we got home, I noticed that our shirts kind of match the background!  This must be true love.

We went into this store called Java Cow where eeeverything was about cows.  So funny.

And here is the piping.

Nasty kitty shirt

On our way to the ranch there's not much out there.
Taggart's Grill is basically the big tourist site of the area.
And how fun is that....they have pet peacocks outside.

Funny highlights of the trip:

-When we checked into our hotel, we had told the desk attendant that we were recently married.  She looks at me and asks, "So are you just starting at BYU?" (kind of asking, wow!  what a big step for this 17/18-year old girl to get married).  "No," I replied.  "I'm a senior there."  For the rest of the trip, I was haunted by the idea that someone might think might be high schoolers.

-After church on Sunday we were riding the elevator back up to our room.  A big black guy turns to Derek and says "You're a sharp dressed man."  And goes on to talk about how we need more sharp-looking men in the world.  My cute husband turns and says "well, I've got a pretty lady with me too!"  Our new friend turns to me and says, "See?  He is sharp."  

-There was no microwave in our room to cook our Sunday dinner. (we barely remembered to stop on Saturday and buy food for Sunday.  Almost a bonus fast Sunday there...)  So we wandered around the hotel for probably an hour looking for one.  I felt like by the end, everyone in the hotel had probably seen us and we looked like idiots.  Finally, we got brains and called the desk for one.  Promptly afterwards, we received a microwave :)

Overall, it was a super fun trip.  Three cheers for being married!!

So we have a blog.

When I was in 9^th grade, I had an English assignment from a teacher (who terrified me).  The assignment was to take ten poems and compare them in a paper.  Easy enough, right?  Because this was a trimester-long project, it conveniently turned into my 10-hour personal progress project for Choice and Accountability as well. Woohoo!  My mom helped me decide on Robert Frost and gave me many questions to think about as I read.  Cheesy as it sounds, I think this project changed my life.  Learning about the poems’ themes and thinking them in relation to my life changed the way I think about the world. Even the hard parts became more beautiful. 

Frost wrote about nature, change, and appreciation of life. One of my favorite Frost poems is called The Pasture.  It goes:

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too. 

I think the reason I love it so much is his delight in the little things. Even during the chore of raking leaves away, he finds joy in the life all around him. 

When I love something, I want to share it with others.  Whether it’s a funny thing Derek does or something delicious to eat, it’s better when it can be enjoyed by more than just one.

So that’s one of the main purposes for the blog:  to just share what I love (and what WE love…Derek will get on too and do guest posts) with you all J   

So…ta da!  I have a blog!  Hope you enjoy!

I feel like this post is serious-ish, but hopefully it doesn’t stay like that.  We’ll see!