Utah Getaway

Mike and I traveled to the land of Utah this last weekend. My dear sister Brooke was coming to Provo to try out of the Cougarettes. It was also her first time on the college campus she will be attending this Fall. Brooke is a BYU cougar. She is the first of the Rod Smith family to go there since our parents attended BYU. The rest of us in the family went to BYUI which is great because BYUI is the best. Anyway, I am digressing.

Mike and I picked up Brooke from the airport and immediately took her to In n' Out burger. SO good. Mike and I have been waiting to go there again since December. She liked it but not as much as us. 

My Mother commanded us to photograph EVERY moment of the weekend because Brooke forgot her camera. So no worries. I have photographed almost everything. We arrived in Provo and made signs for Kaycee who was competing in a gym meet against the Utes that night. It was my very first gymnastics meet. It was pretty. They just fearlessly fling themselves in all directions on bars and vaults and floors and stuff. I could never do it. BYU lost by less than a point.

We also took Brooke on her first campus tour. Well, Whitney and I did. The boys were glued to the TV all weekend watching the fabulous, never-ending tournament of March Madness (Not my favorite thing right now). I made sure to be as embarrassing as possible. Through the roof excitement here!

 The never-ending stairs of BYU campus. I am glad that BYUI doesn't have that.

 The ducks of campus.

We did WAY too much walking. My little toes are still recovering.

Whitney and David were great hosts. They played with us all weekend and went out to eat with us all week. We went to Cactus Rio(Cafe Rio) on Saturday night. Brooke kept saying all the restaurant names wrong, like In 'n Out was Top burger according to Brooke and Cafe Rio was dubbed Cactus Rio. So that was the great joke of the weekend. Saturday we shopped and I bought nothing! It was a hard thing to do. The boys were yet again glued to the TV watching b-ball. We sent off the children(Brooke, Kaycee and Taylor) Saturday night to a dance so we married people could have fun. We went to Spoon It Up, a frozen yogurt place. It was the first time that I liked frozen yogurt. I didn't get a pic. [Sorry Mom]. We also played Kinect on the Xbox which was a lot of fun. 

We left Sunday morning and sent Brook on her way. It was the weekend away that we needed. A fun time with friends and family. One of the things that I did was completed P90X yoga. It was an hour and a half long and it took me three hours to do it. I never thought that yoga would be a workout but it was. I was sweating up a storm.

Me doing some yoga while the kids got ready to leave to dance.

Brooke spent the weekend texting and sleeping a lot. 

She ate an entire Cafe Rio pork salad. 

The boys watching basketball.

All in all. Great weekend. We had a lot of fun and were happy to see friends.

Why marriage is just the best thing ever!

Well thinking back to my freshman year of college people would tease me and say that I would get married really fast and that I would have a ton of kids fast. I use to say "No! I am not getting married for a long time!" and looking back on that I wondered why I ever didn't want to get married. Being married now is a blast and so much better than I ever thought possible. It does help that I have a really sweet husband who helps clean, wash dishes, does the laundry and cuddles me whenever I want. Here are my top reasons why marriage is so much better than I ever thought possible:

1. A cuddle buddy whenever you want and then some.
2. You don't have 5 other roommates to clean up after, only one now who is not that messy. At mine is not that messy.
3. He does part of the cleaning.
4. No more saying good night and going to separate apartments.
5. I get to cook as much as I want now because he will eat pretty much whatever I cook which is really really nice.
6. He does the laundry. It was part of our agreement of renting an apartment that did have a washer and dryer. I was so sick of coin operated machines.
7. He does the driving. I help drive on road trips but in town he drives.
8. He opens the door for me.
9. He will pick my up from the gym when I don't want to walk all the way home.
10. School is just easier. Who knows why but it is easier.
11. He is good at scanning homework for my when I need it done. 
12. He has cleaned the bathroom the last two times.
13. He lets me take command of the kitchen which is my favorite room because it is all to my design. 
14. He is pretty dang hilarious and really puts me in the best moods.
15. And we are just married.

This kind of turned into an "I am grateful for Mike" list. But still it is the best parts of marriage. I am sure that I missed some things that are so fabulous about marriage but still, it is just great. I love you Mike!

Update on life

Our little Garrard family has been busy busy with school and sometimes I forget to blog, or am just to lazy. I need to be better because I like reading everyone else s blog posts. Here is what we have been up to:

• Inviting friends over for dinner on Sundays
• going to Cafe Rio - our fave place that is so yummy and delicious
• Date to see the movie - I am Number Four
• reading, lots and lots of reading. I am on book 23 of the 32 I have to read for all my classes this semester.
• Working in the Office of Foundations
• donating plasma every week
• We celebrated the anniversary of our first date on February 26th by going to Apple Bee's for dinner
• Playing Settlers of Catan with friends
• doing lots of homework, or at least Mike is doing lots of homework
• We go to the temple every Thursday
• We went bowling with our ward which was a lot of fun to get to know people and meet new people.
• cleaning the apartment and grocery shopping every week
• cook lots of yummy meals like: chicken fried steak with crash hot potatoes, taco rings, white chili, corn bread, chicken bacon ranch pizza, pot roast with carrots and potatoes, cube steak sandwiches, chicken enchilada's, banana bread, chocolate sheet cake, cake balls, cookies, pasta salad, and many other things that we love. I like the cooking part of being married. It is my favorite thing to do other than read.
• For Valentine's Day we celebrated by making our favorite meal which is cube steak sandwiches and had cake balls for desert, and we watch John Q. It was a fun night of no school.

So our lives have been pretty great. Nothing to complain about that is for sure. Married life is so much better than I ever thought possible. 

Ship Breaker

I am in a Young Adult Literature Class this semester. I am required to read 30 novels this semester for this class alone. I have been reading tons. I am on my 18th novel for the semester. My newest read is called Ship Breaker bu Paolo Bacigalupi. I started it last night and I have only 50 pages left to read! It is one of the best books that I have read this semester.

If you like The Hunger Games, then you are going to LOVE Ship Breaker. It is action packed, intense, adventure, and dystopia all in one good book. Seriously you have to read it!

Cafe Rio and Vocal Point

This week has been a normal week of homework and classes. I am finding out that Mike has a lot more hw than I do and that I need to stay away so he can finish his hw which is SOOO hard to do sometimes. I get bored. Anyway, have completed 13 books now for my young adult lit class. All is going well there. I am reading the Hatchet series from Gary Paulsen right now.

I received my financial this week! Woohoo for free money. To celebrate Mike and I decided to add Cafe Rio to our dinner plans! I love Cafe Rio!! I love to get their chicken burritos enchilada style! They are massive. I usually can only eat like half of one in a sitting but I had donated plasma that day and was starving from lack of eating. Don't ask me why I didn't eat that day but I just forgot. Here is a picture of an amazing Cafe Rio burrito.

Perfection in a tortilla.

After dinner we headed back to Rexburg for the Vocal Point concert. Vocal Point is a  a cappella group from BYU Provo. They are amazing and hilarious. We loved it. They were the right blend of spiritual, funny, and hip music. The concert was 2 hours and I wasn't even bored when it ended.

 

 

Ya, great date night. That is what is new in our lives. Enjoy!

Well, well, well

Life is great right now. Literally great. We are three weeks into school and classes are going well. Mike's favorite class is New Testament and Middle East. New Testament is my favorite too! We are being the cute married couple and taking a class together. We have Brother Pyper for New Testament. He is awesome! Really knows his stuff. This is the 3rd time I have taken a class from him. I am taking Young Adult Literature too this semester. I have to read 30 novels by finals and I am proud to say that I have read 8 novels and have started my 9th.  I blog later about the books but I have this website we are required to use called www.goodreads.com . It is a great site that people post reviews about books, they tell you what popular books are out and everything. Try it out! I love it.

I am proud to say that Mike and I have made dinner pretty much every night except for the nights when we live on left overs. I am loving it. I love cooking and I enjoy it so much. I like baking too but that is proving to be a dangerous thing to do. Mike and I are the only ones to eat it which means extra calories that I do not need! So we are trying to be minimal about the baking. Some of the things that I have made are: fiesta chicken bake(LOVE THIS SOOOO MUCH), chicken divan, white chili, homemade chicken/bacon/ranch pizza, creamy italian chicken, spaghetti, homemade foccacia bread, apple bars, beef stew, meat loaf, steak over rice, and lots and lots of banana cookies. 

Apple bars!!! Yummy!

I love our apartment. I am proud to say that we are not over crowded and it is spacious and the perfect size for us. It is all homey and I love it. My favorite thing is being in charge of the kitchen and having control over what is in the fridge.

Our family room.

 This is a really comfortable couch. Mike put together the book shelf.

So our apartment is the perfect size for us.

We got the game Settlers of Cataan for Christmas this year from my parents. We play it all the time with our friends. Pretty much every Saturday night. It has been a lot of fun. 

We do not have a lot of married friends but we love seeing our old roommates and hanging out with them. We have been having a blast back in Rexburg. 

A couple side note things:

I deleted my Facebook. It is one thing that I am glad that I have done. I have much more time on my hands.

I donated plasma for the very first time. My first visit I started to get all faint like. I got really dizzy, nauseated, hard of hearing, and my eye sight blurred to the max! But the second visit I made it through the whole cycle without getting sick! 

Mike and I are doing a really good job about not going out to eat all the time! We have only done it like 3 times! So proud of us.

We also made a rule of no soda and chips in the apartment. Which is really hard because chips and salsa are my vice. But I am glad we made the rules we did because otherwise I would be really fat. 

I have started a work out regiment. It is going good. I love working out but the hard part is being able to make it to the gym. Once I am there I am good to go but it is the going that I struggle with.

Well life is great and we are nothing but happy here.

Recap of 2010 Since November 12th

Well I have been scolded by family and friends that blogging is going to have to be updated a little bit more than every three months. I am shooting for every week or every other week. It depends on how exciting our lives are.

So 2010 was probably the best I have had in my life. I mean how can you top getting married? Mike and I were sealed for time and all eternity on November 12th, 2010. The weather was gorgeous and sunny. My hair and make up was perfect. The reception was perfect. We are truly blessed to have so many people in our lives who could be there to show their love and support for us.

One of the reasons why I haven't posted about our wedding is because I don't have any pictures from the wedding. But here is the one picture that perfectly describes our wedding day.

It's true pictures can say a whole lot more than words. I am obsessed with this picture!

After our wedding we headed down to Las Vegas on a road trip for our honeymoon. It was a blast and had the perfect amount of alone time and family time. The reception was designed and headed by Mike's amazing sister Sarah! It was great and we had a blast at the reception in Vegas too. We headed back to Washington through a snow storm and spun out on our way to Boise. We finally made it safe and sound back to Washington on the 22nd. Mike and I both headed back to work at Spanky's and Borders. We worked for a couple weeks before our next road trip to Vegas for Christmas.

We spent our last Sunday in Washington with my family celebrating Christmas a little bit early with roast beef, mashed potato's, gravy, cinnamon rolls, present opening, and watching the classic, White Christmas. We loved that night with my family. We headed out to Yuba City on Tuesday morning which I was sad about because I miss the funeral of Peggy Glem. One of the most influential woman in my life who had just suddenly passed away that previous Saturday.

Peggy Glem is truly and amazing woman who has blessed the lives of so many women like myself.

Well from Yuba City we headed to Vegas to start the Christmas celebration all over again. We had a great time with Mike's family. We had great food. I tried two new kinds of jello. We opened presents. We played Settlers of Catan. We saw the movie True Grit as well as the new Chronicles of Narnia movie. Mike went snowboarding and played volleyball. Both of which he has been dying to do since we moved to Washington in July.

Then we had family pictures in Vegas. Mike and I got to be one of the last families because we didn't have kids which was fine. Mike and I just read our books. We left for Rexburg on Thursday and moved into our apartment on Friday. Dad drove all the way from Washington to drop off our stuff so we could move into our apartment. We are so grateful for his sacrifice to do that. It was not easy and he got stuck in Boise on the way back because of road closures. I love my dad!

Mike and I spent New Years Eve unpacking and moving in. I was sick and asleep before midnight. I know, lame. It has been so fun moving in and setting up our first home together. I love our apartment. Here are some pictures of the moving in process:

Mike was a trooper and put together a book shelf and the shelf storage things that goes over the toilet in the bathroom. My favorite part was the Target and the Bed, Bath, and Beyond shopping spree which was great! We finally got to spend all of our gift cards!!! Loved it! I will post more pictures of our apartment once it is set up and decorated. School starts on Tuesday which I am very excited about.

So my New Year's resolution? Blog more. Take more pictures. Exercise. Wish me Luck.