Our First Valentines Day (Married)!

To start off, Jen is the head poster on this blog, so forgive me(Don) if this post is strange in any way. Hopefully beginners luck will hold out...

We had to switch up our laptops for the past few days so Jen signed on and forgot to sign out... making this the opportune moment to hack in and share a few of my thoughts!

Tomorrow is Valentines Day- our first as a married couple! Last year, a leadership conference took me to California for the weekend and I was unable to be with my amazing Fiance (at the time). This year though, I am home to stay and can't believe the history we are making as we continue forward in our eternal marriage!

For all that know Jen, and I assume that is each person who reads this blog, there is nothing negative that can be uttered about her. Jen is the love of my life and will be forever and ever! I love waking up to her each morning, kissing her goodbye as we part for the day, texting silly messages back and forth, seeing her for the first time in 10 hours (usually- when she picks me up from the U), making and eating dinner together, doing the dishes together(since we have no dishwasher), being lazy when we have a few minutes to do so, attending church together, walking around the Village and so so many more things. I have been blessed with her sweet and gentile spirit, her kind and caring attitude, her gorgeous and refreshing smile and her beautiful loving eyes. From my perspective, I am truly the luckiest man alive. Each day is a new adventure, every moment together- a time of Joy and I love every second of it.

Before Jen and I started dating, I never knew this depth of love was possible- now I know it is!

I love you my Amazing, Beautiful, Kind, Supportive, Generous, Spiritual, Loving, Understanding (and so much more) Wife. You keep me going and motivate me to become a better man.

You are simply the best, and always will be. Happy First Valentines Together :)

Much Love,

The Hubbster

bless their hearts

My kids are always giving me notes and pictures and jewelry and other cute stuff. This one managed to make its way to our fridge. Good motivator!

some favorites

You know you are old when you can only get through about 5 pages of a book before falling asleep. Let's be honest, after spending a day with the 3rd graders, I am lucky if I can make it through about 3 pages before sawing logs. In spite of this, the last few months I have read a few really good books--if you're looking for a good book to read, I recommend these!

 

a look back at winter vacation...

As per tradition of posting on our blog on only a semi-annual (at best) basis, here's a look back at our winter vacation.

We had an awesome two weeks eating, sleeping, shopping, traveling, new-car-buying, baking, eating out, playing, watching movies and house sitting. Here's a look back at what we did on our two weeks from school/work...

I kicked off the winter break a few hours early by watching the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas at school with my kids. Alot of them had no idea that there was an old version, and I had no idea it was only 23 minutes long! (I swear it was way longer than). We may or may not have eaten alot of candy canes that day too.

Here's a few highlights from our break.

We ate an **amazing** traditional seafood dinner at the Willie's house to celebrate with Don's dad before he headed to visit family.

I have been wanting a Kindle for quite sometime and Don being the adorable husband he is, surprised me with one. So sly!! (Don't mind the nastiness/pastiness of this picture, yuck).

Christmas eve we decided to sleep in the living room...just because we were being festive (my family judged us when we told them that). Don is trying out his new razor.

Dawson was festive for the occasion. (Note: I had to take this picture like 265 times before he would hold still, there may have been a bribery of treats involved).

With my family Christmas day.

Christmas night we headed to Temple Square to look at the lights. We even found the Cambodian bag.

Don's sister, Lauren, and mom came with us to brave the cold!

First married Christmas

(Don't mind that this is out of order). In the days leading up to Christmas we did a TON of baking. (I don't know what I was thinking). Here are some gingebread cookies that we made.

Snuggie gingerbread man

Cyclops gingebread man

Abominable snowman gingerbread man and Colonial gingerbread man

Don surprised me with dinner and tickets to the Nutcracker

I am SO SO SO lucky he knows how to cook (he may or may not have had to teach me when we got married...)

The food was amazing!!!

Off to see the Nutcracker! 

For a few months we have been looking for a new car. One day, while running errands, we decided to stop by the subaru dealership just to browse...and then before we knew it, we had traded in our cute little red Ford Focus (I cried a little inside) and drove away with our Subaru Impreza. We are LOVING it. An added bonus is that I don't feel like my life is in danger when driving to work before the plows have come on days it has snowed. Go, Subaru!!

For our wedding, one of our friends that I work with gave us a weekend in Vegas. So we decided to leave the cold and go enjoy some sunshine.

This Statue of Liberty is made from Jelly Belly's. Pretty impressive.

The best show in Las Vegas, one without people, just fire. 

 Hope you all had an enjoyable break and a happy new year!

One evening we walked outside....

...and saw this

it's beginning to look alot like thanksgiving, christmas and everything in between...

We've been enjoying our first official holiday season as a married couple. Thanksgiving was filled with lots of food and family! The day before Thanksgiving I had work off, so I baked pies (admittedly, a first) for both Thanksgiving dinners. Thanksgiving morning we slept in and then headed over to Don's parent's house where we ate yummy antipasta (who knew that stuffed olives and anchovies were so good?) and all of the traditional Thanksgiving food. We had a few hours to digest and then headed over to my family's house for round 2. It was a fun day spent with lots of food and lots of family. Sadly, we only have pictures of the Thanksgiving at the Willies because....our camera was run over by a car. (We apparently are hard on cameras...seeing that our other camera drown in the ocean on our honeymoon).

The turkey!

Thanksgiving at the Willies

The next morning we woke up bright and early (3:45 am to be exact) and headed with my siblings and a few friends to shop. Oh, Black Friday, how we love it! Don was a trooper and stood in line *alone-and-in-the-cold* at Best Buy to get our purchases (a camera to replace the one that drown and was smashed by a car). The rest of us ventured to Target. We always go a little later than the early birds, so when we got to Target nearly everyone was in line and we basically had the store to ourselves! Not too bad. They even had the 16 mile check out line going pretty fast. Best of all, we got all of our Christmas shopping that morning.

The rest of November was filled with studying, studying and more studying. Don took the LSat on December 11th. He is feeling good about how it went and will get his scores back in the next couple of weeks. He'll begin applying to law schools in the next few weeks. We celebrated by going to lunch and then he came home and hit the books to study for his 5 finals the next week. I also sent my graduate school application off to the U.

We've had fun decorating our cute little apartment for Christmas, seeing the Rockettes, going to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert and making/eating some yummy treats. Now enjoying some much needed r&r after a crazy four weeks!!

Our first Christmas tree.

Rockettes

Before we headed out to see the Rockettes

Decorating gingerbread cookies

Lauren's fancy gingerbread woman!

Sprinkle attack!

Caramel popcorn for my co-workers

Stage for Christmas concert

My sisters at the Christmas concert

Spencer, Kenard and my mom and dad at Christmas concert.

Happy holidays to all!!!

Fallen off the planet? Maybe.

Well, it has been a while. We had a busy and fun end of October complete with...

• going to the pumpkin patch with our good friends, the Swinks and the Stephens. 
• Carving our pumpkins together later and having quite the festive apartment. (I even carved one for my classroom with an apple in it (only appropriate)). 
• A fun classroom Halloween parade and party with some great help from parents! 
• Purchasing a new kitchen table for our apartment that we had our eyes on for nearly a year!! (We even got it 60% off...how could we have passed that up? False. We could not.)
• Hosting a little impromptu election night party.

This month we are...

• Studying HARD for the Lsat (well, Don is) that is coming in THREE WEEKS.
• Applying for Grad school for next fall (me).
• Figuring out future life.
• Counting down the days to Thanksgiving--such a wonderful holiday. 
• And of course, counting our many, many blessings.

Happy weekend!