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!