Costume Fun

Our Halloween was pretty lame, in actuality... Gentry worked a double that day, and I went to school. But that didn't mean we couldn't dress up.

Gentry had a costume contest at work, and he ended up winning the award for "The Best Use of Spandex."

I was somewhat more conservative, and just went with the typical nurse costume. 

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkins!!!

Fall is my favorite time of year... the weather is perfect, you always have an excuse to drink hot chocolate, and the atmosphere of the holidays approaching fills everyone with excitement. 

One of my favorite things to do... carve pumpkins!

My little brother, Samuel, had grown pumpkins in my parent's garden this summer, and when Gentry and I went to visit, he was very excited to give us one. This is how our happy pumpkin turned out. 

Hadley and Taylor carved pumpkins with us. Taylor's, sadly, got a little massacred.

The boys thought it would be funny to make it look like the one pumpkin got shot, and the other pumpkin be an innocent bystander. 

Then, Hadley and Gentry decided they needed to make things look even more realistic:

Gotta love them!

And this picture's just hilarious. We went to a movie, and Hadley, Taylor and Gentry imitated the Twilight poster. Pretty accurate, no?

Huntsman Senior Games

For athletic training I had the opportunity to go with some of the other students down to the Huntsman World Senior Games. I honestly don't know how I didn't know about this event before, it's the Olympics for seniors!
I got to go be the medical staff and the women's volleyball, and it was super fun to get to watch these ladies play so well! They were so sweet with each other, before each game they all gave the team they were competing against something to remember them by, whether it was candy, a note, or a bottle of Buffalo Hot Sauce from Buffalo!

These athletes truly inspired me. Being able to be their age and still participating in sports and things they love to do is amazing to me. It makes me want to be like them and never stop being active and healthy!

Conference Weekend

The weekend of General Conference was kind of fun for Gentry and I. Gentry's friend from Portugal was here in Utah for Conference and wanted to meet up with us and one of Gentry's companions. So Saturday afternoon we headed up north, stopped and saw my family, and I got to meet Gentry's friends.

From left to right: Parker Allen (Gentry's companion), Simao Martins (from Portugal), and of course, my handsome hubby.

Wisdom Teeth

I got my wisdom teeth out on October 4th. Let me tell you... it was great! I chose the option to do sedation, so I was completely out for the whole thing. I remember talking to the doctors and they are prepping me, and then next thing I know, I'm getting into the car.
I'd consider myself lucky, overall. I really didn't hurt for the first two days, and I barely swelled up the whole time. Plus, I had lots of these lovely friends to take care of me after the pain finally came on Day 3.

Gentry was so incredible. He drove me home from surgery, pulled the car over on the way home to let me puke, put me to bed right when we got home, and made sure to give me the right pills when I needed them. He even got me a Frosty the first day so I could eat something, and boy, that was delicious! 

 I ate the equivalence of my body weight in ice cream and soft foods such as this Jell-o the first week, but thankfully I got through and I'm doing tons better.

Thoughts

I found this photo on Facebook the other day, and while most of the time I ignore them and don't even bother reading them, I read this one and it really stood out to me. 

The past little while I've had a hard time knowing that things would work out, I felt like I would never get a handle on the things in my life, and that no matter how hard I tried, I would not be happy. 

Then a realization finally hit me: it DOES NOT MATTER what the world throws at you and how much people might let you down. Your amount of happiness depends on yourself. YOU choose if you are happy or not. The world is never going to give you anything that will make you happy, happiness comes from within you and what you choose to do with your life. 

I absolutely love this quote from President Hinckley:

So for the past couple of days I have been working on finding reasons to be happy, why life is great. And you know what? Life is great. Sometimes it's hard to believe how great my life is. I am so blessed, and so many times I realize just how much I take all these things for granted. 

Life is good. And I am happy.

Pizza Night

One night we decided to make a pizza for dinner. Yes, make. Homemade. Be amazed. Surprisingly it turned out really good! We had fun making it together, and Gentry laughed when I told he didn't put enough cheese on the thing (he knows very well that I don't like cheese. Pizza's the exception.) 

The only thing I would've changed was that the crust wasn't very crispy in the middle. I'm allowed to say that because I made the crust. Oh well, better luck next time. 

And there's my loving husband in the background doing all the dishes for me (love him!) And right here:

Is the amazingly stacked tower of dishes that he created while washing them. I was so impressed I had to take a picture. His reply? "This is how a REAL man stacks clean dishes." 

Well, I love my "real" man, and all the help he gives me. I couldn't ask for better!

Shooting

This weekend we took a much needed break from life. So, we drove a whole hour south to St. George to see Brandon and Courtni! Even before we bought my new gun, we had wanted to go shooting for a while, so that's where we went! We had so much fun, I managed to even hit the target a few times!

The boys getting the guns and the target ready.

 

 

Poor Savannah, she wanted to get down and play, but there was glass all over the ground, so she had to stay in the back of the truck. But she was pretty good overall, cute girl!

Brandon and Courtni, our bestest friends ever!

Savy didn't want to look at the camera...

Gentry with Savannah 

Thanks for such a fun weekend, babe! You're the best!

Impulse Buyers

Gentry and I have a problem... we love to impulse buy. Truly, it's an addiction. Here's our latest buy:

This little thing is all mine, baby! I'm sitting in class, and all of a sudden I get a text from Gentry saying, "Can I buy you a gun?" What?!? Completely random, but he knows I've been wanting one. So after class I met him at the pawn shop, and decided that it was worth getting!
It was only after that Gentry confessed to me that he will only impulse buy on things he knows I want as well!
So again, he finds another way to spoil me rotten... I'm so lucky!

New Toy!

As you can see, we've got a new toy to play with, and thus far, we are loving it!

Both Gentry and I loved our Nissan Titan; seriously, loved. But, it was giving us issues, and the gas mileage was horrible, so a few weeks ago we had started looking at trucks around Cedar to see what there was. On Monday we found this little beauty, traded in the Titan, and bought it!

Ward BBQ

If you'd read my other posts, we were planning tirelessly for our ward party. We made the sign-ups, bought the food, and we went for it. It turned out rather well, I thought. I only got a few photos from the whole thing, and they were at the beginning while we were still cooking food, but at least we got a few!

 My father-in-law, Gentry, and our activity committee members working over the food. 

The dutch ovens baking in the fire pit. 

Our committee members, the Banks, brought their little puppy to help out, and he ended up providing us with non-stop entertainment!

I'm so glad this went off so well, and we hope everyone enjoyed themselves!

Our lives

It's safe to say we stay pretty busy, what with school, work, extra athletic training time (me) and outside school assignments (him). But we have been attempting to continue doing other things besides, and still try to see each other once in a while!

1. Church. We just got a new calling, we're now the Activities Committee Chairpersons. Right now we've been planning a big ward barbeque as an opening social, and I think it's going to turn out great! We're even lucky enough that my father-in-law, Wayne, is going to come down and make his famous fried doughnuts! I can't wait! Besides that, we've been going to stake activity meetings, and been planning some big events, like a huge tailgate party for the stake before the first home SUU football game. Sadly I'll be doing athletic training, and Gentry will be at work, so we can't actually go to the event, but it's been fun to plan.

2. Work. We've truly been blessed, because at the beginning of the school year, I had no idea how many hours of commitment the athletic training program was going to require. With that type of schedule, it was pretty impractical to try and work a work schedule in with it. So we looked over our finances and decided that I would quit, and we'd have to be tight with our money. But fortunately my employer was willing to work with me and I could work a couple shifts a week so I didn't have to quit. It's not a whole lot, but it ties the ends together, and I'm so grateful for it. 

3. Institute. Silly me, I had the thought that people stopped going to institute after they got married. Wrong! Our young married stake has several special classes just for married students, and we-or maybe I- decided we were going to take one. So now we are enrolled in Building an Eternal Marriage, and while I've been to the class once by myself, and we missed this last week, I can still feel the importance of the class and how it will help us as a couple.

4. Athletic Training. This mostly just deals with me, but it's a big enough part of our lives that it ought to be mentioned. In short... I love athletic training! While I've been very go-getter about all my studies, I'd never found something that I just knew I wanted to do. Well I finally found it! Athletic training is so great, it involves all of the things I've always wanted to do in a career, and puts it all together. True, it is a lot of work, and it involves a lot of extra hours in the training room, but every day makes it a little more worth it!

Our lives are pretty boring for the most part, but we still find time to get out and enjoy ourselves. Last night we went on a date, went and got some amazing Mexican, and then went and saw The Words. If nothing else, I got to spend some time with my sweet husband, whom I love dearly, more and more each day, even when he teases me mercilessly! He's my forever, and is everything I have ever wanted, and more than I deserve. I'm literally in love with my best friend, and it makes life so much better!

Weekend in Delta

So the weekend before school started, Gentry and I wanted to do something to officially end our summer. He had wanted to go up to the Delta high school football game, so we decided to go up with Brandon and Courtni, and then go horseback riding and boating too! Wouldn't you know it, I didn't take the camera with me anywhere but riding, but I still managed to get a few good pictures.

Brandon, Courtni, and Savy riding the horse

My hubby being the cute cowboy 

Savannah loved playing on the farm!

Hoo-rah for summer! Ours was pretty much the best!

Honeymoonin' in Vegas!

I'd never been to Vegas before (I know, shocker) but we went for a week the Saturday after we were married for our honeymoon. It was so much fun! Sadly, almost all of the few pictures I took were all at the pool, and I didn't get any of Vegas itself.

Our awesome hotel

My cute hubby... poor boy, he ended up getting so sunburned!

We had wanted to go to the Vegas temple, but wouldn't you know it, it was closed the week we were there for cleaning. So we decided to drive to it anyway and sit on the grounds for a while. 

After we'd got completely sick of each other (just kidding!) we invited our friends, Brandon and Courtni to come see a show with us the last few days we were there. It was so much fun to have them there with us!

The first week of marriage... completely and utterly awesome!