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 :)