Moving, Our First Anniversary, and a Mission Call

Josh and I are now mostly moved in to our new place. We still need to bring over our computer desk and most of the stuff on it. We are going to pick up the last of this stuff today when Josh gets done at work, and then we will also have to scrub the apartment so that they don't try to charge us a cleaning fee.

So far, we love our new place. It has newer cabinets and counters, floors, and instead of obnoxious pot-smoking neighbors, we get to be with family! It's fun for us to be able to just run upstairs and visit the Stayners for a little while. Often, we even get little visitors from upstairs coming down here, too! Jameson and Samantha love to come play. As you can tell, Samantha finds me absolutely fascinating.

One of the drawbacks of our new place is that the door is super small. So small that our new dream couch that we are in love with and only bought in just December can't fit through the door. So we are couchless. We found seating to make do for now, but somehow it's just not the same.

Yes, we have gone from a tan, microfiber, pillowy beauty that matched everything to these. One navy and one red camping chair. It's probably pretty obvious who sits on which one. (And if it's not obvious, just think of my Alma Mater and Josh's current school. And if it's still not obvious, then just let it go). The brown cushions don't look quite as nice on them as they did on the couch...

Sunday was our first anniversary! In some ways I can't believe it's already been a year, and in other ways it seems like it's been longer. All I know is that I am the luckiest girl in the world! I'm pretty sure Josh is the only guy who could ever put up with me. But he is the sweetest, patientest, most loving, kind, hard-working, generous, fun, selfless husband ever,and he's ridiculously good looking to boot! It's been a wonderful first year! We've had 2 moves, job changes, a couple of trips, a new couch, a new car, 1 hospital visit, lots of visitors, and countless good times.

Since our anniversary fell on Sunday, the celebrations were more low-key. After church, I came home and made Josh a dinner of beef stew on rice and pasta salad.

Through-out the day we'd look at the clock and say things like "Right now, a year ago, we were on our way to the temple" or "we were at our reception." It was so fun to be able to look back and remember the day.

After dinner, we took a walk around our new neighborhood for a little while. Then, later that night, we joined the Stayners at J.L.'s mom's house for some light post-pioneer day fireworks. Jameson was scared of the bigger fireworks, so we stuck mostly to the fountains. It was so cute to watch them pick out a firework and then get all excited about watching it.

When we got home, we exchanged our gifts.

Josh has really been wanting the Indiana Jones movies, so I got those for him. He really loves Indy. One time, we were stuck in a huge crowd and he all of the sudden grabbed my hand and started singing the Indiana Jones theme while he charged ahead to find a route through.

Josh's present for me was way better than mine for him. When we were first looking for rings when we were getting engaged, we had found a wedding band that I loved with my engagement ring, and we were going to get it but decided later on that it would probably be more responsible just to save that money since we were just getting started and would be having a lot of expenses come up. So Josh went back and got me this ring for our anniversary!

I tried to take a close up of it, but my camera stinks...which gives me and idea for next year's present...But anyway, I absolutely love my ring, and I'm so excited about it!

The next day was what we called "anniversary observed." We baby-sat Samantha and Jameson while Janalynne and Liam went to the doctor, and then we headed down to Provo. Jordan's fiance, Kaitlyn, gets free 7 Peaks Water Park passes from her work and she was nice enough to give us one. We picked the pass up from her, and then headed to the water park. We got there, gave them our pass and paid for the other ticket, picked a spot for all of our stuff, and then headed to our first water slide. When it was just a few people away from our turn, they shut down the park because they spotted lightening. Then there was tons of lightening in the sky...it didn't look too promising that this was a storm that was just going to blow over. We went to an office worker and begged for some passes for another day. Despite my pleadings that we hadn't even touched water yet, had been there only 15 minutes, it was our anniversary, and that the entry fee was a lot of money for us to spend, she refused. I was livid. So we found some shelter and decided to try to wait the storm out, even though it looked like it was going to last awhile. Fortunately, however, it cleared up after about 45 minutes and the park re-opened. A ton of people had left, so the lines for the slides weren't bad at all. The only bad part was that it was still over cast, so it was pretty cold. After about an hour and a half, we had done all the rides that we wanted to and decided to leave. We ran back to Josh's grandma's house and showered, and then went out to dinner at one of my most favorite restaurants of all time: Carrabbas.

I mentioned that it was our anniversary in hopes of free stuff (I know, I'm shameless), and our waitress did not disappoint. Dessert of vanilla ice cream with caramel and some kind of pecan deliciousness on the top, on the house!

It was a wonderful first anniversary!


Today, I woke up to a phone call from my little brother, Riley, saying that they were expecting his mission call to come in the mail that day and to be ready to Skype at 7:00 that night while he opened it. Just a couple of hours later, I got another call from Riley saying that his call did come, waiting until 7:00 just wasn't going to happen, and that he was going to open it right then. My computer doesn't have a built-in web camera, Josh wasn't home with his computer that does, and I don't know how to work my attachable one, so I listened on speaker phone while he opened it. He is going to the Portland Oregon mission! We are all really excited...he wanted to go state-side and he got his wish! And Oregon is a beautiful state...my brother-in-law is from there (and actually, he guessed that was where Riley would go!). So, while Riley is on his mission, there is a good chance that the Bells will go there to visit their family, and they will be only minutes from Riley! We are all so excited and so proud of him. He reports to the MTC on October 13!

Let Freedom Ring!

Josh and I had an incredible 4th of July week! It all kicked off when Lindsey, Nick, and Makenzie came in town to visit. They were here for a Bell family reunion, so we didn't get to see them too much during the day, but it was so fun to get to hang out for a little while every night! We haven't seen them since they moved to Arizona at the end of April, so we were really excited. But, as seems to be the motif lately, tragedy stuck. Lindsey was sick with the flu when they first got here. Then Nick was hit with strep throat and Makenzie got strep throat and a double ear infection (guess maybe I should have cleaned up what looks like black mold growing up our wall?...kidding). The saddest thing ever was that poor little Makenzie would be so thirsty and ask for water, but would scream after one sip because it hurt her to swallow.

Since the 4th of July fell on a Sunday this year, we celebrated on the 3rd. I had to go into work for about an hour and then we headed over to LDS Hospital to see our new nephew, Liam! He's so cute and tiny! Poor Janalynne had to have an emergency C-Section. This is making for a slower recovery, but she is doing well.

After leaving the hospital, we headed down to Provo. We grabbed a bite to eat at Taco Bell and then had some frozen yogurt.

Then we parked at Josh's Grandma's house and walked over to BYU's football Stadium for the Stadium of Fire! Our seats were on the opposite end of the stadium from the stage, so it was great that we got to see the stage head-on and not from a weird angle.

It was PACKED!

They had Carrie Underwood come out and sing the national anthem. Everyone was going crazy because we weren't expecting to see her until later in the show. It was the BEST I have ever heard the national anthem sung. And when she sang "the rockets red glare" they shot off red fireworks. Then, right when she finished the last note, 4 fighter jets flew over the stadium. How do they time that???

They did a lot of fun things for the program. A bunch of local young dancers came out on the field dressed in red, white, and blue and put on a pretty good show.

Then, they did the world's largest Eagle's Nest for the Boy Scouts. They had all the Eagle Scouts in the crowd stand up and hold a picture of the eagle symbol that was in the center-fold of the program.

Next was the moment Josh and I had been waiting for: the Carrie Underwood concert! She is my all-time favorite singer; this was the second time I have seen her in concert, and her voice has blown me away both times. She really does sound just as good live as she does on her CD! She kicked it off with one of her current hits, "Cowboy Casanova." She sang a lot of my favorites, like "All-American Girl", "Wasted", and "Temporary Home." I can't even express how fun it was to be there! Here is a picture of me and Josh with Carrie (she's the little dot way in the back drowning in bright lights...)

Carrie wrapped up the concert by singing "Before He Cheats" and then (though we all begged for an encore) it was time for the Stadium of Fire fireworks, which were unbelievable! Seriously as good as Disney World.

And while they were shooting off, the dancers came back out onto the field and made a giant outline of the USA. This looked awesome, but it got scary because they shot some fireworks out of the side of the stadium and some stray ones bolted right for the crowd of girls, which was terrifying.

When it was all over, Josh and I began the long walk back to our car. We were really lucky, because it didn't get cold when it got dark. Perfect weather! When we made it to Josh's Grandma's house, some of his cousins, his aunt, uncle, and sister were there, so we stayed and talked for a little while before making the drive back to Salt Lake.

The next morning (which was the actual 4th of July) was church, so we tried to dress a little festive.

While we were at church, the Bell's had to leave. But they left us behind a "thank you" in the form of a ColdStone gift card!

Thanks, Lindsey, Nick, and Makenzie! The ice cream was delicious.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, my brother, Jordan, proposed to his girlfriend, Kaitlyn! She came to South Carolina to visit, and he popped the question while they were out walking on the beach. She was completely surprised, because Jordan had convinced her that he didn't want to get engaged until after the summer was over. They will be getting married in December of this year!

The week following the 4th of July, I went over to Janalynne's a couple of times to help out with the kids. Because of the C-section, she's not supposed to go up stairs, lift anything heavy, bend over too much, etc...which is pretty much impossible when you have 3 kids and are trying to keep a household going. Then Josh had a great idea...we were supposed to move into their basement apartment at the end of July anyway...why not just move in now so we could help Janalynne out while she recovers? She readily agreed, and now our apartment looks like this:

We took a load of stuff over yesterday, and we'll be taking over another load today when Josh gets back from work. Hopefully, we will be in by the end of the week. We are so excited to be in our new place!