Road Trips!!!

So now that I am a married woman, I am officially part of the holiday schedule. This year is Thanksgiving with the Bradshaws and Christmas with the Perkins. For Thanksgiving we met up with Kyle and his family, and we hitched a ride with them up to Washington. It was really great being able to see everyone!

Less then a month later, we made the journey to Kennewick again! My best friend, Katie, and Brad's best friend, Sam, got married in the Columbia River Temple so we went up for the week to give them our support (it was a BIG bonus that my family happens to live there). The wedding was beautiful, everyone did such a great job. She looked absolutely perfect and Sam made such a handsome groom. Brad's parents and sister also came up for the wedding so it was kind of fun to combine my two families. I also got to do Katie's hair for her wedding so I LOVED that! We also did quite the job on their car... Overall, we ended having a great time. In all honesty, I was super bummed that I wouldn't be spending Christmas with my family this year, but this trip to Kennewick really made the transition a lot easier on me.

The Christmas blog is coming soon but here are all the pictures leading up to Christmas. Enjoy!

Our weekend

I know it has been awhile since I have updated this thing. I hate writing new posts and not having any pictures to go with it, but they are still all on the camera. I always write while I am at work (I work at a computer lab and it is totally allowed!) but I never have pictures with me. I usually make Brad send them to me via email, but finals start on Monday so he is just a tad busy. Awe the joys of finals... However, I am absolutely thrilled to announce that these are the last finals I will ever take! Wow, that just feels good to say. This Thursday is the last class I will ever take. Mmm... that feels equally as good. I am SO EXCITED to be done! Well I am not completely done, I still have my student teaching next semester. I was pretty bummed to find out that I will be in Jordan school district, which means I could have to drive an hour there and an hour back every single day M-F. I haven't found out which school I will be at yet, but we are praying for the closest school. Brad punched some numbers and found out that this one semester in my super-duper economical explorer (sarcasm) could cost $1500 in gas. Hence the praying.

So we had a pretty eventful weekend. Friday we had Sam and Katie's bachelor/bachelorette parties. Brad and the boys went surfing - there is this place that shoot water down a lane and you can surf. I don't exactly understand it, but it was fun watching the videos of the guys falling over. For Katie's we ordered pizza, bought lots of junk food, watched a chick flick, and played Nertz. I guess us girls are a little bit cheaper than the fellas...

On Saturday we went up to Salt Lake for a little date. First, we went shopping like crazy. We did good though because we only have Brad's dad left and then we will be officially done with Christmas shopping! At least we are on top of something at the moment. During our shopping trip, I had my first experience with the Quilted Bear. Holy moley that is one adorable store! I wanted to buy EVERYTHING! I honestly think we went down each aisle twice.

After shopping Brad took me to a restaurant I have never been to before, Spaghetti
Factory. It was crazy packed and we were seated at the smallest table there which was right next to the stairs. It was kind of awkward since we couldn't fit our salad plates, drinks and meal plates all at the same time, but that added to the charm of it. It was really fun, and quite delicious. Mmm how I love me some tortellini.

We then went to Brad's parents' house and spent the night. We celebrated Alli's birthday the next day with a great dinner and a extremely tasty chocolate chip bunt cake. Overall, it was a great weekend. Now we will be doing projects and doing finals for the next two weeks nonstop... so it was nice to have a little fun before the sadness that is finals.

Need a photographer?

We were very lucky to have our newly engaged best friends, Sam and Katie, ask us to take their engagement pictures. Not going to lie, we weren't very confident in our photography skills quite yet and I think all four of us thought that they would hire a photographer for their "real" engagement pictures afterwards. However, we were very wrong.

I don't want to brag or anything, but Brad and I are pretty dang good photographers! Okay well pretty dang good for beginners at least. We really got into the groove. We switch off taking the pictures, but most of the time it is Brad behind the camera and I set up the couple. Brad is great at composing the shot, but he forgets to tell Katie that her hair is in her mouth or that Sam smile looks like he has an evil plan. This is where I come in! I think we make a really good team. So I don't want to post too many pictures from our photo shoots because I don't know which pictures they are choosing for their wedding announcements but here are just a few. We haven't edited the last two yet.

Moab

Sorry it has been so long since the last post!! These past couple of weeks have been complete insanity. However, now that I am done with classes and am in my practicum, hopefully I'll find more time to update this thing more regularly.

So as you can tell from the title, this post is about our trip to Moab. We left Friday after class, went off-roading that night and then all day Saturday. My friend Katie brought along four of her friends who had never been before, so it was a lot of fun watching them experience Moab for the first time. The highlight of the trip was on Saturday morning when Sam proposed to Katie!!! Most of you know this but Sam and Katie actually set Brad and I up so we are insanely happy that they FINALLY got engaged!

On Sunday we headed over to Arches National Park and hiked to Delicate Arch. It is a pretty chill hike and is pretty short, but when I stop every 5 minutes to take pictures it adds up. I was behind everyone the whole way there (except Brad because he is sweet and waits for me), but I can't help it! It is just way too beautiful down there. So can I just say how much I love our camera? I LOVE IT!

Is it just me or is my husband dang attractive?

Sand Dunes Adventure

This past weekend Brad and I went with his family to the sand dunes for some four-wheeling fun. Brad has been working hard on getting ours working and by Friday we had one all ready to go. His dad towed our 1 plus his 4 on the back of the motor-home, so we were looking pretty hardcore. We got to the campsite around 10:30ish so we couldn't really go riding in the dark so Brad and I started working on fixing our four-wheelers seat cover. We had bought a new covering so we had to take out all the staples and then staple the new on one. Now this was quite the task. It was nearly impossible to get those dang staples to go through the plastic, and they were some pretty intense staples. Our unsuccessful to successful staples was probably around 4:1. At one point Brad had the staple gun pushing as hard as he could onto the seat, Brad's brother Andy was pushing the seat into the staple gun, and I was holding/stretching the cover over the plastic. Well the staple went through. It went through the plastic, the cover, and my finger. We didn't think I needed stitches but it did split my finger open pretty good. About 10 minutes after we got me all band-aided up, Brad was feeling for any staples sticking out and his finger started bleeding too. Luckily he just got poked so it wasn't too bad. So it is safe to say that this trip hadn't started how we would have liked.

That same day, Tanner's (Brad's brother) four-wheeler decided to die on us. They did some tinkering (I say that because I certainly have no idea what they did) and got it running again. The next day Andy's four-wheeler also decided to die on us. There was more tinkering and they got it up and running. Then our four-wheeler decided to die on us. They tinkered. Then they thought maybe it was bad gas so we siphoned (that's right, I know what that word means...I hope) the gas and filled about 5 powerade bottles full of gas. Turns out it wasn't the gas. More tinkering took place. Then we gave up. Secretly, I was very grateful for this because I was just a little terrified having to ride that up down those crazy steep sand hills. Now I had a legitimate excuse for riding on the back of Brad's. On our way to sand mountain...sand peak...sand hill (something like that?) Brad's dad's four wheeler apparently thought we were too fat to ride it and it started making a pretty nasty noise. From what I understand, the thing that prevented the chain from hitting the top broke off because there was too much weight on it, so Brad and I had to switch with his dad.
Although it may sounds like this was a trip of catastrophe it really wasn't. We had a whole lot of fun! I am still a little hesitant to drive up those sand hills, but I absolutely loved riding on the back when Brad did it. His whole family are amazing drivers! They were cruising up and down all sorts of craziness!




Oh and Brad's brothers decided to have some fun with those bottles of gasoline. Our campfire was a good 4 feet that night.

Picture Perfect

Our camera came! Yesterday we decided to go on a short bike ride to campus so we could experiment with our new toy. It seriously took Brad a total of 5 minutes of experimenting and now he basically knows absolutely everything about the camera. All I have down is pointing and shooting. He is teaching me a lot so hopefully I'll figure it out soon. Here are a few pictures we took yesterday.

The Beginning

One of my classes this semester is taught by Brad Wilcox, an amazing author/speaker. He is seriously one of the best professors I have had a BYU, however I am not a fan of some of his assignments. Okay, one of his assignments: start a blog. I can't promise that I will be very regular, nor can I promise that I'll be very entertaining, but I will do my best.

So Brad and I will have been married three months on Sunday. We have been loving married life so far. Our apartment is a little too small for our tastes which is why we are moving next Saturday. It is a little closer to campus and a whole lot bigger. It actually has a normal kitchen (not a hallway kitchen) and the bathroom has a HUGE closet! I can barely wait! Fortunately Brad's grandparents recently gave us two four-wheelers (only one is running at the moment) and a trailer so now the moving process will be a lot easier.

Our other big news is that we bought a camera a Nikon D5100! We have been saving up for awhile now and today we reached our goal! Now we are planning trips all over so we can play with our new toy. It should get here by this weekend which is absolutely perfect since we are going on an ATVing trip to the sand dunes with Brad's family! So expect some pretty rad pictures coming your way soon.