our first great leap into adulthood

Brandon and I had talked about buying a house since before we even graduated college. The plan was to graduate, move to Boise, buy a house, and start grad school. We knew we would have to live with my parents for a little while regardless of the plan, but during that time we both decided to not go to grad school and just get full time jobs instead. We were so excited when Brandon was offered a full-time position at Microsoft that we jumped the gun and put down money to build a house. After the whole mix-up happened, we were devastated (but luckily got all our money back). We were ready to become adults and own a house and start our adult lives, but it all got put on pause, and we found an apartment to rent instead.

We signed a seven month lease (we asked for nine, they said the best they could do was seven...who knows), and thought that by the end of the lease, Brandon would have a full-time job, and we would be making enough money to afford the house we had initially wanted. The job market, however, had other ideas. January 1st rolled around, and there was still no full time job prospect in sight. Our lease ended February 1st, so we decided to just sign another contract, and hope and pray that something would work out in those next few months.

We had been told by so many people that closing on a house can takes up to 2 months, so we had decided to start looking now, so we could put in an offer around the beginning of May and be out of our apartment by July 1st when the lease ended. Honestly, I have been continuously looking at houses since we have been in Boise, but it was time to get serious. We had been looking online and driving around to look at houses since we got back from our vacation in December, and just kept getting so discouraged. Any house that was the size we wanted and no more than 10 years old was just too expensive. We started to feel like the world didn't actually want us to be adults.

Fast forward to the past two weekends. We found a neighborhood further away from the heart of Meridian than we had originally been looking at. Brand new construction, starter homes of the size we were hoping for, and definitely in our price range. Two weekends ago we found one that we liked, but the day we called to set up a showing they told us that someone had put in an offer the day before. Everyone said "it just wasn't the right one, the right one will come along when it's supposed to." This past weekend, we went back out to the neighborhood to look at another house right next to the other one, and we fell in love. This was the first time we had been inside of it, and it was perfect! The realtor that took us out there said it would go quickly, and that the same house couldn't be replicated for the same low price. After a day of consideration and double checking my calculations to make sure we could afford it (I couldn't believe how well it fell into our price range, I'm obsessed with it), we put in an offer.

Last night the house officially became ours, as we signed the final documents. We pushed out the closing date as far as possible, and landed on May 5th.  We are so excited to finally be making progress in the adult world, and I'm just happy that life didn't let me down after getting my hopes up so high. Less than fifty days and we will officially be home owners!

Monday sap.

We ventured down to Logan over our three day weekend so spend some much needed time with Brandon's family and our friends. It was so nice to see everyone and interact with people our own age for a change, and spend time catching up with Brandon's parents and siblings.

Brandon's family tried to make this weekend my birthday celebration weekend, and they did a pretty great job! We went to my favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner, followed by Big Hero 6, candy, and brownies. The next morning we all went to The Creperie for breakfast and it was amazing! Afterward we played Heads Up, and it was hilarious. It took a little bit for everyone to warm up and be comfortable being crazy, but by the end we had James jumping over imaginary hurdles, and Caroline and I tag-team charading the words. Brandon's mom made me a ginormous quilt for my birthday too. She told me it would probably take her a few weeks to finish, but she, Caroline, and Candis busted it out in less than a whole day! I am in love with it.

On Saturday we went to lunch with the same friends that we went to Florida with. We love that any time we spend together just never seems like enough. It is seriously always that way. We saw them Thursday night for fifteen minutes, and it about killed us to leave. We spent 3 hours with them at lunch, and even then we could have kept talking for hours. Brandon has this coming weekend off, so we invited them up to Boise and they said yes without hesitation!! We are looking forward to a fun weekend with them, and probably will end up holding them captive so they can't leave.

That same night I went to dinner with my friends (I don't think I will be hungry for the next week, all I did this weekend was eat). It was fun to catch up with the three of them; I feel like so much has changed in the last six months! We ate, laughed, and gave the waiter a hard time about the milkshake machine being broken. It's always hard to say goodbye to my friends, but I know we will for sure be seeing each other at Chelsea's wedding! Let's not wait until then though, okay guys?

I love Boise, and it's always kind of hard for me to go back to Logan, but there are a lot of people I love down there that make the trip a little bit easier. I'm thankful for Brandon's family for making me feel like a part of their family, and for my sisters-in-law who seriously could not be any cooler. I love all our couple friends, who always make me laugh and who make our marriage an adventure to be shared. I'm thankful for my friends, who have loved me at my worst and supported me through hard times, and never fail to be there when I need them the most.

I'm only a little bit sorry for the sappiness, because when life gets hard and I feel a little lonely, I get a strong reminder that there are people that love me, and that I get the privilege to love them back.

December. January. February.

You would think that, at some point during the 37.5 hours I sit in front of the computer, I would find even just a few minutes to type something up for the blog. I have plenty of time, but honestly nothing that exciting has happened since Christmas, so we'll start there.

We made the long journey from Boise to Orlando to spend Christmas in Disney World and Universal Studios with our best friends Alyssa, Jake, Mickey, and Harry Potter. We had the absolute best time riding rides, seeing the sights, drinking butterbeer, eating all the many different pretzels, and playing Heads Up while we stood in line. It was so fun to spend six straight days with our friends not worrying about work or anything else, and eating ourselves silly (that was obviously our favorite part). My favorite part from our days at Disney World was eating at Be Our Guest (a.k.a the Beast's castle from Beauty and the Beast) on Christmas. The whole place was decorated for Christmas, and the servers always referred to the Beast as Master. The main courses were great, but we ended up ordering six desserts and splitting all of them; it was heavenly. My favorite part from Universal Studios, was the second night when the guys went to go ride a roller coaster, and Alyssa and I went back to Wizarding World, drank butterbeer, and sat on the streets of Diagon Alley to watch a play performance about the Deathly Hallows. In that moment, I felt like I really was a part of the wizarding world and I probably could have died right then and been perfectly happy with my life.

Jump ahead to January. Brandon and I had a long weekend a couple weeks into January, so we invited Alyssa and Jake up to spend the weekend with us. We had a fun couple days playing games, eating food (our specialty, it seems), and just bonding. The lease for our apartment ended January 31, so a few days before the end of the month we signed another lease and now have an end date of July 1st.

February brought warmer weather and lots of sunshine, and it has been great! Brandon and I made a whole weekend out of Valentine's Day, starting with The Melting Pot on Thursday night, Coldstone Friday, crepes, a movie, and costa vida on Saturday, and a heart shaped pizza on Sunday. Brandon had taken Saturday off so we could spend the day together, and it was so nice! I had work off that Monday for President's Day, so I read, played piano, and then had dinner with my parents that night. Then this last weekend Brandon had the whole weekend off so we could go to Idaho Falls for my cousin's mission homecoming. It was so nice to see all my extended family and spend time with my cousins! This coming weekend, Brandon has the whole weekend off again so we can go to Logan. It has been a while, so we figured we should make a trip down south to see everyone.

I have been putting in quite a few hours at my old job at the counseling office. They hired a new person, so I have been training her for the past three weeks, but then I got a call on Friday saying that she was no longer available for the position. They brought in a temp so answer phones and do the scheduling during the day, so I had to train the temp yesterday, and will be going in in the afternoons to do billing and answer phones for a while. It won't be too bad really, but this week I am working from 7-4 at the school so I can make up for the hours I will be missing on Friday during the in-service, so yesterday I worked from 7:00 am to 6:30 pm. Takes me back to the library days at Utah State!

In other news, my birthday is a week from today. I can't really comprehend the fact that I'm going to be 24. I still feel like I'm 20! The other day my grandma told me that I'm no spring chicken anymore, and I'm slowly accepting it. The librarian's birthday is the day before mine, so this morning I made a banner and am having students and staff sign it for her. I do love celebrating other people's birthdays and going all out for them, but I have a hard time with my own! Here's to the last week of being 23!

Time is a strange thing.

Brandon and I had the weirdest realization the other day, one that, at some point or another, we thought would never come: we have officially been graduated for a whole year. A year ago, we took our last finals, and here we are, working full time and living in a completely different city. A year ago, I started a full time job at the library at Utah State, and now, I'm in a middle school library absolutely loving it.

Needless to say, we are pretty darn happy with our new lives here in Boise. I just can't believe that in another two and a half months we will have been here for a whole year! We feel like we are settling in a bit more, which is nice. I know I probably say that in every single post, but each time I say it I feel like it is true. We enjoy spending time in our cute little (literally) apartment, and have a few "regular" spots in Boise. It is nice being able to call such a great place home.

I talk about how much I love my job all the time, but seriously, I fall in love with it more and more every day. I am working on my application for grad school because I am hoping to start in August (for real this time) and I am so excited to add my experience at this job to my paper and interview. It has instilled so much more passion in me to work with students on a deeper level because you guys, the amount of potential these kids have and the light in their eyes for all things new and unexplored is incredible. I don't know at what point in life we lose that excitement, but these kids have helped me find it again, and I love them for it. It really is the best.

Some recent happenings:

--Brandon's parents, older brother and wife came to visit us last weekend and we had the best time! We ate tons of great, local food, showed them around Boise, and looked at a ton of Christmas lights. We hadn't seen them all since October, so it was really nice to spend time together and catch up.

--This is fairly unimportant, but Brandon and I have been working on a stupid Christmas puzzle for 19 days now. It is 1000 pieces and so. freaking. hard. My dad loves puzzles, and I always start out thinking that maybe the puzzle skills were passed down to me and have just been lying dormant and that this time they will arise, but guess what: it never happens. And not this time. Last Friday I literally fell asleep in the chair trying to work on it. So yeah, I hate puzzles.

--We still miss all our friends in Logan.

--Since we are leaving on Tuesday next week for our trip (four days!) and my parents are leaving for Hawaii on Monday, we are having Christmas this weekend. Saturday will be Christmas Eve, and Sunday will be our Christmas! It won't be the same being in Florida for Christmas, but we definitely will still have a great time!

--If you are ever basing your job off how much food is served around the holidays, I highly recommend working in a public school. I am pretty sure I have gained about six pounds this week from all the student gifts and faculty potluck. It's amazing.

Next post will be about our trip to Florida. Have a Merry Christmas!!!

about today.

Life throws us through the ringer sometimes, that's for dang sure. Between feeling like I never see my husband, financial things, and just feeling unfulfilled in life, the last few months have been pretty terrible. The thing, and it's a sad thing, is that ever since a strong bout of depression four years ago, bad days just seem to be the standard. Sometimes people give me a hard time for getting excited over little things, but if I don't get excited about stupid, little things, all the bad things take over and it sucks. I feel like the hard stuff builds and builds until I break and literally can't do it anymore.

Which brings me to the past few weeks. Like I said, the last few months have been hard. Brandon has been stressed with work, I have been stressed with life (as usual) and we hadn't taken a lot of time to just do us and really communicate. Last week we decided to eat dinner at the kitchen table, rather than in front of the tv. Growing up family dinner was always so important to my mom, and I didn't think it would really make a big deal with just the two of us at home, but after doing that for a few days Brandon and I both commented on how nice it was just to be able to sit and talk. Of course we always talk about our days, but for some reason it was just different sitting and talking for a while.

Friday last week we went on a date night that included dinner and a movie. We love dinner dates because a. food and b. good conversation. Then we went to Big Hero 6 and laughed like the little kids we are. Saturday Brandon only had to work for four hours, so afterward we drove 20 minutes to our favorite Costa (again, food). That night we were planning on going to a tailgate party at our apartment complex for the BSU game. We made some snacks , got all geared up, but when we got to the clubhouse, the only people there were old people. Don't get me wrong, I love old people, but we were planning on going to the party so we could make friends, and this wasn't really our crowd of people. So rather than stopping for the party, we continued through the clubhouse out to the car and went to my parents' house instead.

I've said it before but I'll say it again, I love how strong my relationship with my family has gotten since we moved back here. Watching the BSU game (and a terrible movie, sorry mom) with my parents was so fun. We just sit and chat and have a genuinely good time. Not to mention we are all super evil at heart and have made hiding the cardboard-cutout Sheldon to scare people a new hobby. I'm obsessed with my family.

On Sunday, Brandon and I set out on a mission to take our own Christmas card picture. And let me tell you, it looks amazing. If you are one of the lucky people who receives one, you'll see what I mean Monday we had an in-service day at school. I love the kids at this school, but it's always nice to have a little time to bond with the rest of the staff. I still feel like the new kid sometimes, so I like getting to know people more. Brandon and I both had Tuesday off, and took the opportunity to celebrate our 4 years of officially being together. We slept in until 9:30, had crepes for breakfast, then didn't leave the apartment until like 3:30 when we went to go get Costa (yes, twice in four days). It felt amazing to not do anything all day!

Onto today, the real reason for this post. I woke up in the best mood today. Like I said, I get excited about little things, but this morning I was happy for no real reason at all. It was supposed to snow later today, but when I left for work it was already lightly snowing, and I didn't even hate it. I spent my time at work today listening to Christmas music, drinking hot cocoa, and painting snowflakes on the windows into the library. It has been a super freaking good day, and I am so happy and grateful for today.

So this was a long-winded post just to say how awesome today has been, but basically today I realized that while life can suck a lot of the time, somehow the good times always pull through for me. I thought of this while I was doing random things around the library, and it's super corny, but I'll post it anyway: the man can get me down, but at least I have my man to get me back up.

The thing I miss the most.

When Brandon and I first moved to Boise, people would ask us if we missed Logan. And at first we did a bit, because it was our home for a long time, and we missed the familiarity of it. There are definitely still certain things we miss about it, but we have done a good job of making Boise are home, and after a few months here we felt settled and let ourselves fall in love with it (not that I ever fell out of love with it, but I love it way more now than I did when I lived here before).

Being back here with my family, after they have lived here for 14 years, it seems like everywhere they go they see somebody they know, they have friends they hang out with regularly, and they have specific things they like to do. Brandon and I are slowly developing that list of things we like to do often, but we are still lacking in the friend department. When we lived in Logan, we had that life where we would see someone we knew basically anywhere we went. Our coworkers weren't just coworkers, they were friends, people we could hang out with outside of work and have a genuinely good time with. We had traditions with friends, friends we saw multiple times in a week, or friends that we only saw a few times a month but each visit was just as special as our time with other friends.

Honestly it kind of breaks my heart to think that we left all that. I mean everyone has to move on at some point, but I am getting to the point where I have been friends with some of these people for five years, and that seems like a really long time. It makes me sad to think that there is a possibility that in another five years the only connection we will have with these people will be Christmas cards. Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a hard time with losing people, but I have learned that it just happens, and while it is sad, eventually everything is always okay.

This isn't supposed to be a sad post. It is just something I have been thinking about the past few days. I just am super appreciative of the friends I have had in my life, especially those Brandon and I will be seeing this weekend when we go to Logan. Seriously guys, our living room floor is always open.

Fall is here?!

I was pretty accurate in my last post in saying that it would be about two months until the next post. This time the lack of posting isn't because we haven't done plenty of fun things, it's more because we have been way too busy having fun! Seriously, life has been so nice without having to worry about homework and tests, sometime we don't even know what to do with ourselves! I'll back up a bit and do a quick recap of life the last six weeks or so.

At the end of August I started my new job. I haven't been this happy with a job since I worked at the movie theater (I loved my internship at Sky View this much too, but that doesn't really count as a job). Brandon just keeps telling me how happy he is that I am so happy. I made him a cake on Friday just for fun, and apparently that's a big deal and shows just how happy I am. But seriously, I look forward to going to work every day, love the eight hours I spend at school, and go home in the best mood full of happy stories to share. I always swore I would never work in a middle school, but I'm so glad I didn't write this job off before even applying for it. The kids are hilarious, and the staff here is awesome too. I am the youngest staff member here, and there are only like three people here who are close to my age, and they are all guys. There are a few people I really click with, but making friends is a slow process. So in other words, we still don't have friends here, but at least I'm happy with my job!

Microsoft is still going well for Brandon. Hours are going to start picking up here in the next month or so with all the holiday shoppers, so that is both good and bad. Bad because that means less time together, but good because money and more time I can spend at the mall visiting him/shopping. He is also still doing work for Campsaver, but that is starting to wind down a bit more. He used to do his Campsaver work when he had days off at Microsoft, but now that the work is dwindling he has more time to just hang out at home. Rather just than playing Xbox the whole time (though there's plenty of that going on) the kid cleans, runs errands, and pretty much does anything that I would do to keep the house clean after work just so we have time to hang out. I appreciate him so dang much, especially lately, for some reason (hence the cake).

A few random things:

-Some of you might have seen the pictures we posted the weekend before Labor Day of our quick trip to San Diego. Our anniversary was on August 20th, and every year we have been married so far we always take a trip for our anniversary. This year, we hadn't planned one, but the Friday after our third anniversary we decided to do something we never do and be spontaneous. So Friday night at 8 pm we booked a trip to San Diego. We left Saturday after Brandon got off work, spent Sunday and part of Monday exploring, then came home Monday afternoon. It was a super quick trip, but so much fun! We went to Sea World, the beach, a place called Seaport Village, and even got sunburned, which is all I really wanted.

-We found some kitties and their mama in a field next to our apartment about a month ago. When the found them the mom was super underfed and most likely not able to feed her kitties, so we have been feeding them ever since. They are getting more comfortable with us, and we are hoping to catch them this week and take them to a family we found that wants. Brandon's manager is taking one kitten, and his neighbors (farmers) are taking the rest of the kitties and the mom! I will miss them when they are gone. This morning Brandon tried to convince me to bring them all to our house to get them out of the rain but I (for once) was the logical one and told him no.

-At the beginning of August I asked Brandon if we could watch lots of football this season. Then, and especially now every single time we watch a game he tells me I've changed and asks what is wrong with me. But he hasn't let me down! My youngest brother plays on the JV team for his high school so we go to those games every week and it's awesome. I have never been so into a football game as I get at his. There are times when I'm jumping up and down screaming "that's my brother!" and I love it. I also have gotten to spend time with his cute girlfriend before and during the games. She hangs out at my parents house before the games so we usually spend our time watching TLC and talking about girl things. Anyway! In addition to Adrian's games, we always watch the Boise State games on Saturdays, and even went to the homecoming game last weekend. We watch the Utah State games when they are on tv, and we generally watch the Denver Broncos games with my fam on Sundays. Seriously guys, so much football.

-Blake Shelton came to town on Thursday so we finally were able to put the tickets I bought back in May to good use. Dan+Shay (my faves) and The Band Perry opened for him, and it was an amazing show. After the concert we got to meet Dan and Shay (swoon), and while it was wonderful, it was nothing compared to meeting Cassadee Pope. It was a super late night, and I had been sick all week, so Friday was a bit rough, but totally worth it.

-This isn't anything exciting, but the awkward slump of no good movies coming out is finally coming to an end! Our Tuesday movie tradition has had to slow down a bit due to lack of good movies, but we're making up for it!! We have seen three movies in the last nine days, so yeah, I'm a happy girl.

-Also, it was dreary and cold here this weekend. Not super cold, but 65 degrees, so it's officially fall here in Boise! I miss summer much already, but I'm not going to lie, I have been looking forward to wearing my leggings and long socks since April, so I'm okay with this.

-Last thing, I bought a piano! I have been trying to teach myself a few things, but it is slow going. I had one lesson with a guy who taught my brother guitar, but it didn't work out. I have my first lesson with a different guy tomorrow, and he is the orchestra teacher here at Lewis and Clark, so it works out nicely. I have always wanted to learn to play the piano, and it will be helpful when I write songs to be able to write the music in addition to the lyrics! Don't worry, when I'm famous I won't forget any of you.