Another Semester Down...Almost

I need a break from studying right now before my head explodes.

These last couple weeks have been crazy. I have such mixed feelings this time of year. Part of me is so excited for Christmas and to go home and see family, watch movies and drink hot chocolate. Then there's the student part of me that couldn't dread this time of year more. I curse whoever invented finals. Ty and I have had such a hard time falling asleep lately, and I'm positive it's because we have so much information in our brains right now. I know more about diseases than I ever cared to know, and Ty has been mumbling some statistics lingo that I don't understand for quite a few days now. And on top of everything our finals are supposed to be on thursday and friday, but since our teachers are just as burned out as we are they want to be done as soon as possible. So now all of my tests and projects are due by tomorrow instead of spacing them out between thursday and friday. So basically this is what our lives have consisted of ever since we came back from thanksgiving break

just one  more week and then we're free... at least for a little while.

On a more exciting note, the newest bulding on campus is being dedicated at the end of this week! I present to you the BYU-Idaho Center

awesome right? We are so excited. This building has been under construction ever since our first semester up here. They also remodeled the MC, which is where the cafeteria is and also the bookstore. It's basically where everyone hangs out. The parts of it we've seen look so nice, and they built a skyway from the MC to the library which will be AMAZING when it's -20 outside. It'll be so nice to not have areas of campus fenced off anymore. The auditorium above (totally looks like the Conference Center), which is in the BYU-Idaho Center is where we will have devotional every week. Ty is especially excited for this building because there are like 10 basketball courts in there or something, and the competitive basketball league will be playing there in the winter. President Eyring is coming to dedicate the building on friday, and Elders Nelson and Bednar will be accompanying him. Oh yeah, and we have tickets to go to the dedication!!! We are so stoked. At least finals week will end on a good note... I just hope we don't lose our minds before then.



Milestones

This weekend was kind of a big deal for us for a couple of reasons.

1. We spent our first night apart since we've been married. It was so weird.

One of my good friends from Reno got engaged a couple months ago and she's getting married on the 18th. She goes to school at Utah State in Logan, which is realtively close. Her roommates were going to have a bridal shower for her so I drove out to Logan with her little sister and a couple of cousins who also go to school at BYU-I. I was a little hesitant to tell Ty about the bridal shower because I didn't know how he would react to me leaving for the night. He was totally fine with it though, he was probably excited to have the whole night to play video games and hang out with his friend Steven, who just recently got back from his mission and is also going to school here.

The bridal shower was really fun (I totally forgot to take pictures.. oops!). It was just nice to be around a bunch of girls, a lot of whom I had grown up with and hadn't seen in a long time. I love being with Ty all the time and not having to share a bathroom with 5 other girls anymore, but lets be honest: every girl needs some good girl talk from time to time. At that is exactly what we did Friday night. We all spent the night at my friend's house and just talked and talked. I really wanted to text Ty and see what he was doing, but I was totally having this internal battle with myself. I didn't want to seem super needy or like I didn't want to be a part of what was going on around me, but at the same time I wanted to know that Ty was ok and not just sitting at home alone (and I wanted to make sure that he missed me of course). I finally gave in and did text him for a few minutes. It's so crazy how dependent I've become. I can't live without him! As it got later and we started getting ready for bed, I realized how weird it was not to have Ty around. I'm so used to talking to him whenever I want and not having to call him to say goodnight (we did enough of that while we were engaged to last us a lifetime). We left Logan in the morning and I was back in Rexburg cuddling with Ty by noon. Looking back on it now it totally wasn't a big deal to be apart for one night, but it seemed to be so much longer than that. Before this weekend the most time we had spent apart was like 3 hours. Ha! We are so newlyweds. I'm proud of us for making it through the night without each other!

2. We bought our first Christmas decorations on Saturday! I had such a blast picking things out :)

We knew we were only going to get a small tree because a: we won't have a lot of room to store decorations after everything's been said and done, and b: We're not even going to be here for Christmas so we'll only get to enjoy our tree for a couple weeks. We started by going to the local craft store here in Rexburg. The entire store was just full of Christmas stuff. I now realize that it is a terrible idea to go to a craft store without really knowing what you're looking for. I got a little overwhelmed with so many options so I just decided to leave and come back when I had more of an idea of what I wanted.

We still had some Christmas shopping to do, but since we live in a little farm town we had to go to the mall in Idaho Falls. We got our shopping done pretty quickly so we decided to cross the street and go to Target before driving back home. We were just walking around aimlessly when suddenly there they were. Tons of Christmas trees followed by aisles of ornaments and lights and stockings and wrapping paper. I started walking faster towards the trees and Ty just followed without asking questions. We picked out a tree and moved on to the ornament aisle. I have realized since we've been married that I'm not as decisive as I thought I was, but my goodness. I had the hardest time ever picking out ornaments. Red, green, silver, gold, blue, white, etc. I couldn't choose. I stood in the same aisle for probably 20 minutes. Picking things up and putting them back on the shelf over and over again. Ty was probably bored out of his mind. He would say things like "Do you like the red ones? What about the gold ones? These are cool." Poor thing, just trying to get me out there faster. I finally decided on the ornaments and then it was on to the next aisle to pick the wrapping paper. Another 20 minutes. Why do they give you so many options???

We came home and I started decorating the tree right away. I'm pretty proud of  how it turned out. We still need to get a few more decorations, but at least we have some Christmas spirit in our house now!

These past 3 months have been full of "firsts" and  I've been enjoying every one of them. I'm so excited to start our own family holiday traditions and keep experiencing things with Ty. I feel like we learned some things about each other and our relationship by being apart, even if it was just for a night.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This last week was a blast. It was so nice to have a break from school and to hang out with our families! The drive home was pretty scary. The plan was to go all the way to Coloma on Saturday but there was a huge storm in the mountains so we decided to stay in Reno with my family and leave the next day. It took us 5 hours to get to Coloma on Sunday because of the weather (it usually just takes 2 hours). The roads were so scary! There was snow and ice and cars were slipping everywhere. We ended up having to put chains on the tires

Because of the chains we had to go pretty slow. It was kind of nice thought, the scenery was beautiful.

We spent a couple days in Coloma and had Thanksgiving on Monday with Ty's family. It was great to see everyone!

and the food was delicious!

We then went to San Jose to meet up with my family and some other friends. We had fun playing a dancing game on the Wii. Ty and my brother danced to "Eye of the Tiger"

and my dad and sister danced to "Who Let the Dogs Out"

Then we ate more yummy food

hung out with friends

and danced, and danced, and danced!

The drive home was long and a little stressful. It took us 7 hours to get through the mountains, and then 12 and half hours to get to Idaho from Reno

There was a lot of traffic and we saw a ton of accidents. We're so thankful we made it back to Idaho safely. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!



Thankful

Thanksgiving is such a fun holiday. I love it because it's the one time during the fall semester that we get to go home, but also because it's a time to reflect on our lives and recognize everything we've been blessed with. Ty and I have so many things to be thankful for, but we just picked five to share with you.

1. We are thankful for our families. We often exchange stories about our families and things we did growing up, traditions we'd like to keep, and crazy things we did with our siblings. We both love our parents and our siblings and are excited to be able to see some of them this coming week!

2. We are thankful for school. We love BYU-Idaho and we're so thankful that we're able to get an education (and have some fun while we're here too)!

3. We are thankful for church. We are extremely blessed to have the gospel in our lives. We are thankful for the inspired leaders of the church who guide us and care for us. We're thankful that we have a temple literally up the street, and for all the other blessings we receive as members of the church.

4. We are thankful for sports. I'm sure most of you are well aware that sports are everything to Ty. I'm thankful that Ty has the opportunity to play sports here at school, and I'm thankful that I grew up in a family of sports fans so I know what's going on when I watch Ty play! We love going to games, mostly football and basketball. It makes for fun date nights and we love spending that time together.

5. Last but not least, we are thankful for each other. Married life is great! I love being with my best friend all the time. We always have fun together and love learning more and more about each other. This semester we were lucky enough to work out our schedules so we have a break at the same time. We just hang out in the cafeteria and talk, and talk, and talk. I love that we don't necessarily have to be doing anything to have a good time; just being together is enough to keep us both happy!

Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

"F" is for Fall... and Football

Last fall Ty's roommates were all on a flag football team. Ty was going to play too, but he broke his wrist the day before school started so that didn't happen. This semester though he's healthy and in one piece so he played football. His team's name was the Monstars. They did really well; they only lost one game and they played really well together. Here is Ty doing the Heisman pose for me

At BYU-Idaho we start everything with a prayer, including sporting events.

Ty likes playing defense. He is really good at anticipating where the ball is going to go. Here he is catching an interception and running it in for a touchdown!

Here are a few more pictures of the Monstars in action...

I love the sky in this next picture. Also, notice the temple and the church building right below it. I love Rexburg!

Thankfully, the weather was still really nice during the football season. By nice I mean it never snowed. I still wrapped myself in at least 3 blankets every game and always wore a sweatshirt, jacket, and boots. It was a fun season, and now it's time to move on to the next one. Basketball here we come!

Home Sweet Home

I am happy to say that our apartment is finally starting to feel more like home. It was a lot of work to put it all together, and we're not even done yet. At the beginning of August my mom, my sister (Andrea) and I drove up to Rexburg to drop Andrea off at EFY. I took this opportunity to bring a bunch of stuff up here and put it all in a storage unit so that Ty and I wouldn't have to bring so much up with us after the wedding. I had told Ty that we were going to have a lot of stuff to put in our apartment once we got up here but I think he was still a little overwhelmed when he saw this...

We started moving everything into our apartment the minute we got to Rexburg, and for the next few days all we did was unpack and organize, and make multiple trips out to Target. It took us so long to figure out how we were going to fit our table and chairs into Ty's little car, but we finally figured it out, and we still had a tiny bit of room for me to squeeze into the car too.

We were so busy. We really wanted to get everything set up before school started, which meant we had 4 days or so to furnish, organize, and decorate our apartment. Of course that didn't happen. By the time school started we still had picture frames on the floor that needed to be hung up, a spare bedroom full of miscellaneous items, and NO BED. I don't know why, but in the week we had been in Rexburg, it had just slipped our minds to get a bed. For almost 2 weeks we slept on this pile of blankets. Oh the joys of being newlywed students :)

So, without further delay, here are some pictures of our apartment so far. It's been so fun to put everything together and create a space that represents both of us; individually and as a couple. There are still some pretty bare walls, but we're working on it. Hope you like it!

We live in an apartment complex called Cougar Court. There are 6 other buildings that look just like ours. We live on the third floor. The top 3 windows on the right are our apartment!

We'll start with our living room. We're planning on putting some pictures of us under the "family" sign eventually...

And of course, on any given Saturday you will find Ty in the living room watching college football. Hi Ty!

Right next to our living room is the dining area. I can't really call it a room because it's more of a corner, but it's plenty big for just the two of us.

Next we have the kitchen. We don't have a lot of cupboard space so we bought that shelf thing at the end of the room and use that as our pantry. Don't mind the blue bin, we also use that area as our storage. We're learning to be creative with the space we have!

Our apartment has 2 bedrooms, so we turned one of them into an office. We hardly ever go in there, but it's nice to have a place to put all of our books and other school supplies.

Now for the bathroom. We (I) had something totally different in mind for the bathroom when we registered for everything, but I like how it turned out better than the vision I had for it.

And finally, our bedroom. The wall that our bed is against is SO bare, I'm still deciding what I want to do with it.

I do like this fun collage we made of our engagement pictures though. This is on the wall that faces our bed.

And our closet. Words cannot describe how excited I was when I found out about our walk-in closet. I hope Ty knows what he's gotten into; I don't know if I can ever live with anything but a walk-in closet again!

Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed the tour. We love our first little house together :)