Polar Plunge and Valentines Day

Polar Plunge

So on February 8th I participated in the Cache Valley Polar Plunge in Hyrum. It was a fundraiser for The Special Olympics and I did it because I get credit for doing it in one of my community health classes. My mom and dad even came up to watch me and we went to dinner Friday Night at the Beehive Grill. It was yummy, then I went back to my mom and dad's hotel and we went swimming, and were going to hot tub, but the hot tub was surprisingly too hot. And we watched the opening ceremonies for the Olympics on TV. Pat had to go back to work after we had dinner.
Then on Saturday Pat and I woke up and went to Hyrum and got me registered at 10:00am and then we waited for it to start at 11:00 and for my parents to meet us. When I registered they gave me my t-shirt and I was very tempted to just run away since I had already received the shirt ha ha.
I got kinda nervous and didn't really want to jump in the freezing lake especially after I saw the size of the huge hole they had carved in the ice. But I was one of the first people to go. I just wanted to get it over with pretty much, since I hate the cold. Let me tell you it was freezing! Some people just jumped in and swam across and got out and acted like it was no big deal. I have no idea how they did that. It was super cold and I already started losing feeling in my legs and hands like immediately after I jumped in ha ha. Here's me walking the loooong walk to where you jump from.

And jumping. Longest second of my life while I was in the air. Or maybe half a second since I didn't really jump. I should've actually jumped. Further. A lot further.

And this ridiculous face pretty much accurately describes how cold the water was ha ha

So then after I jumped in and immediately starting losing feeling in my fingers and going numb, I decided I didn't want to swim all the way across the hole to get out. So I swam over to a rescue person and had them pull me out of the water ha ha. But hey I did it!

Valentines 

So our Valentines was a little low key this year since Pat worked in the morning and I had to work later that night and Olive Garden was crazy busy so I had a super long shift. (As far as serving shifts go of course) But I made some cookies before I left for work and then Pat came home and had bought 2 packs of Oreos, and had found me some cookie dough ice cream that doesn't even have eggs in. It. was. Awesome! Not extremely good for me though since I have been eating cookies and ice cream everyday since then, and I am supposed to be training for a triathlon. Oh well. It was delicious. Then when I got off work Pat was awesome and sweet and had cooked us up a nice steak dinner with delicious garlic cheesy potatoes. Love him!!!!

Our extravagant decorations

Heart cookies

What is better than a homemade card? :)

 And here's one to motivate me to train for my upcoming triathlon with my awesome bike that Pat got me last year for my birthday. I think it definitely needs to be in a triathlon. Although it is coming up way too soon I am excited for it!

January 2014

Nathan and Katie's Wedding

On January 17th my brother Nathan and Katie got married. Pat and I were both able to go down and help them get ready for the wedding and Paige and Jason got to come too. They had their luncheon first at the church and it was catered by PF Changs yum. Then everyone went around and shared stories of Nathan and Katie and said congratulations. Mom and Paige did so good and didn't even cry and then it was my turn and I didn't think I was going to cry and then I randomly started crying haha. Oh well. I was happy for them :) They are an awesome couple and I hope them all the happiness in the world :) It was such a fun day and everything went well and Katie looked beautiful and Nathan and Katie glowed with happiness and the reception was great. Paige was their photographer and took most of the pictures I am going to post below. Good job Paigey!

Congratulations :)

The "kids" table at the luncheon lol 

 Poor Jason, this is one of the last pictures of him feeling well. After the luncheon he got really sick and didn't really get to enjoy the rest of the wedding. It seems to follow tradition that whenever my family all gets to be together it never fails that at least one person gets sick. 

The beautiful bride and her bridesmaids :)

Love them

Our good friends Twyla and Breanne got to come. It was so good to see them

Me and my handsome hubby

Me and Paige and Nathan :)

Yay for weddings! :)

Other updates

The rest of January consisted mostly of just getting back to work and school and real life stuff. This past week Pat surprised me one evening when I came home and had left a bunch of clues around the house leading me on a scavenger hunt and to some presents, it was really sweet of him. 

My clues

Fruit and birthday cake flavored Oreos. 2 of my favorites mmm

Birthday cake flavored ice cream and frozen yogurt. At least there is a healthy balance in there right ;)

Then this past weekend we went to Crystal Hot Springs which is about half an hour away from Logan. It was so nice to actually be warm in the winter time Yay :)

 

Christmas 2013

Yay for holidays I love them so much! This year for Christmas Pat and I went down to Tooele and saw both of our families. We went down for Pat's birthday on Dec 16th also because Pat had to have shoulder surgery on his right shoulder to repair a torn rotator cuff, reattach some bicep tendons, and fix part of his labrum. Poor guy had the surgery on his actual birthday. He was such a good sport about it though. Here's Pat blowing out the candles on his lemon meringue pie and opening some presents at his parents house.

This one was dark so we could see the candle lol

Our niece Savannah got Pat Taquitos for a bday present ha ha

Uncle Pat taking a nap with our newest niece Adney

 After having opening presents at Pat's parents we made gingerbread houses. This was my first time making a gingerbread house using actual gingerbread instead of graham crackers. Pat's mom was sooo sweet and made everything so we could do gingerbread houses and she got a bunch of candy and thought of everything possible for decorating the gingerbread houses. It was fun! The gingerbread and the frosting had a bunch of eggs in it though so I wore plastic gloves the whole time I made my house ha ha

 

We celebrated Christmas Eve at my parent's house with the Jaspers as is tradition and opened white elephants. Then we read the Christmas story from the Scriptures and went around and gave everyone a chance to say what they were grateful for. My dad was grateful for all the kindness people have shown him since he is having a hard time getting around now and has to use a cane to walk. And Pat said he was grateful that we were able to stay out of debt and manage our finances and have jobs. I said a bunch of stuff and cute Paigie cried and said she loved everyone. Some other people shared too. It was a good night. Then we opened presents with my family on Christmas morning and then Paige and Jason had to leave and catch their flight to Pennsylvania to go see Jason's family. 

I got these two pictures from Paige. 

Pat and I got my parents a huge spatula and a bbq sauce/marinade called Rub some Butt. Ha ha The spatula was huge and said it could be used to lift whole chickens lol. 

I opened my present from Pat last and it was a comforter set with Queen sheets in it!! Yay I have been wanted a queen bed FOREVER!! We have been sleeping on a full sized bed for the 3 and a half years we have been married. It isn't always the roomiest when your husband is 6'4''. I later found out our good friends Phil and Chelsey in Logan set up the actual bed in our apartment while Pat and I were gone visiting Tooele for Christmas. I love it

Yay our  new queen bed!

And a puppy ha ha

 Then after New Year's on January 3rd-4th I came down to Tooele for Katie's bridal shower. I came down the night before though and met my sister and her husband and my mom and dad and we all went and saw Disney's new movie Frozen together. I absolutely LOVED it!

I like it because it is a Disney movie about sisters. Go sisters! :)

We also had a bunch of fun at Katie's bridal shower. And she got a lot of good stuff. I am so glad that Katie gets to be part of our family soon. Yay for another sister. :) 

There are no words ha ha ha

Thanksgiving

So this year for Thanksgiving we got to go down and visit both of our families :) It was so much fun, we had Thanksgiving dinner with Pat's family on Wednesday and Jen was there with Audrey, Hydee, and Becky, and Ephraim on the way,  and Kim and Jimmy and their new little baby girl Adney (Yay I'm an Aunt again.), and of course Terrance, Conway and Savannah. Then we had Thanksgiving dinner with my family on Thursday with my mom and dad, Nathan and Katie, and grandma. Paige and Jason couldn't come down til Friday night. It was great to see everyone.

Also on Wednesday I wen to breakfast with Elise and Danielle and then went to Zumba that Danielle was teaching. It was sooo good to see them. Love those girls and always will :)
 
Pat and I did some Black Friday shopping at Walmart/gray Thursday. Every year we save up and then go buy a bunch of DVD's! They are always on a great sale and they provide us with many fun cozy, cuddle-on-the-couch, date nights for the whole rest of the year. There were sooooo many people at Walmart. I do want to say that it was actually quite a pleasant experience though, for all you Black Friday haters out there. :) Everyone was very polite actually and was saying sorry for bumping into other people, and people were handing other people stuff if they couldn't reach it. I was very impressed actually! It made me happy inside :)

We might have a problem :) We will soon need a bigger bookcase. We only bought the ones in the Walmart bags this year.

 Then on Friday morning my mom and I got up early and went into Salt Lake to do some more Black Friday shopping. It is becoming a tradition for us. I loved spending the whole day with my mom going shopping, we had a lot of fun together. And surprisingly the stores weren't near as busy as they had been in other years, we barely had to wait in line for anything. Here's what I like to picture when I think of Black Friday shopping. . . 

Unfortunately I don't really have enough money for it to be quite like that lol. But I did get a lot of my Christmas shopping done wahoo! 

 

 Missed you this year Paigie!

This was a couple years ago when Mom and I visited Paige in Idaho, ate at this cute place and then went to the mall and did our Christmas shopping in November.

 On Saturday Paige and Jason had gotten here already yay, and Paige, my mom, Katie, and I went into Salt Lake to the Capital for Paige(https://www.facebook.com/paige.k.photography?ref=br_rs) to Photograph Katie's bridals. It was a perfect day and it was nice and sunny and actually kind of warm. Katie looked gorgeous and it was so much fun to help her get her pictures taken.

Since I can't show one with Katie in it, since Nathan hasn't seen her in her wedding dress yet, here is just a picture of the capital. It looks even more gorgeous when Katie and her beautiful dress are in it.

 

 Then we met our men and all went to dinner at Bucca Di Beppa's Italian in Salt Lake. It was delish! And Pat and I went to the Utah State vs. BYU basketball game at the energy solutions arena. Unforunately it wasn't a very good night for the Aggies.

It was so great to spend time with our families, I always wish we could stay longer. But we'll take what we can get. After Pat and I got back, we bought our own 15 pound turkey and made our own Thanksgiving feast so we could enjoy leftovers. 

We had more food than pictured but we were too hungry to wait and take a picture of all of it.

 Pat and I put up our little Christmas tree and had a movie night and sleepover in the Christmas tree room!

Bad picture but oh well.

We've kind of decided to just have a sleepover in the Christmas tree room every night of December since we don't want to move our bed back into our bedroom ha ha

Also I have been sick the past couple of days (boo) and Pat surprised me one day and came home with all of THIS! 

Isn't he a sweetheart? I just love him. I'm sure all the chocolate will make me feel better in no time. 
Yay for the holiday season I love it sooo much and am so grateful for everything that I have. I hope we can all remember to be happier and feel the joy of the Christmas spirit and love and serve others.
 

Better Together

 So it took me forever and a half, but I have finally created a blog yay!!! I am creating this blog for me and Pat and I am going to call it . . . Better Together.  There are some things in life that just go better together than they could ever could be by themselves: peanut butter and jelly, milk and cookies, fat kids and cake,  and I'm sure you can think of way more than I can while I am typing this. But in the short 3 and 1/2 years that I have been married I want to add husband and wife to that list of things that are better together than they ever could be by themselves. Pat and I have gone through thick and thin, fun and not-so-fun,  and we have had some very trying times in our 3 and 1/2years of marriage, but without a doubt I know that we are better together and that we help each other learn how to be a bit better everyday. I love marriage and how it makes each of us grow.  This blog will mostly be to document mine and Pat's adventures together and to share fun memories with family and friends. But I hope that whoever reads it will enjoy life a little more, smile a little wider, live happier, don't forget to laugh, and love more often.  Be warned that a possibly huge upload of photos from our past 3 years might now be added to this blog, to make up for the blogging that I have been missing out on.

Our wedding day May 15, 2010

At our wedding breakfast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was imitating Pat not smiling in this one, but I still almost smiled. Thanks to my sis at Paige Photography for taking these pics :)

 

 

Pat makes these faces a lot for cameras

This is on our Honeymoon at Ouray. Where the background pic of this blog was taken :) 

This is also in Ouray, not the most flattering picture but I still like it lol

At a Bee's game


These next pictures are from celebrating our 3 year anniversary on our Caribbean Cruise! It was awesome!

Right before boarding our plane to Florida :)  Bad picture but oh well.

We stayed in a hotel in Florida the first night and brought macaroni and cheese with us to eat to save money ha ha . Totally worth it since we were going to get an endless buffet for the next  7 days.

Our ship: Freedom of the Seas

Mmmmm We had surprise chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us when we got to our room!

Anchors away!

 Our first stop was a private island called CocoCay. We had to take little boats to get to the island.It was gorgeous! And they had a huge, extravagant buffet waiting for us on the island where we could eat whatever we wanted to.

Beautiful CocoCay

That's my man ;)

This place was my happy place. I could've stayed on the sun deck the whole entire time!

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I needed to spend a lot of my time here at the track, because we ate buffets everyday, ice cream, snacks, and we ordered lots and lots of room service almost every single night. We ate sooooo much food!

One of our other stops was St. Thomas and we went to a beach called Morningstar Beach. I loved it :) It wasn't crowded at all and it was a little overcast which was good because I was sunburnt already!

I tried to make Pat as short as me, but somehow he still ended up taller! :)

We couldn't go to a beautiful beach and not write in the sand of course

Our last stop was St. Maarten and it was rainy, so we stayed and played on the ship for a lot of that day.

I was horrible at the flowrider. It was really amusing to watch for entertainment though!

Here is the only picture we got during the formal night of the cruise, courtesy of our suitcase

There was also a belly flop contest which Pat participated in. Here is the awesome photo. He did great, he got a 10 from me!

And here is a picture of us at the ice skating show at the ice skating rink that is onboard the ship. Crazy!

It was sooooo nice and we had a good time. My favorite part was just getting to spend a whole entire week together.