Halloween 2015

Halloween is an awkward experience for newlyweds without kids. I think Alex and I handled it with grace and style. So basically, we did almost nothing to celebrate besides eat.

Here are our pumpkin pancakes for breakfast and our pumpkin soup in pumpkin shaped bread bowls with a little glass of blood.

We also felt social enough to eat free soup at a ward Halloween party. Although we didn't participate in the costume contest and only stayed about 40 minutes, I'm still deeply offended that we didn't win.

On the actual night of Halloween, Rachel Wilcox (Richmond friend) invited us to a little "couples only" party. There were a few games and a scavenger hunt. The best part was we were home by 9:30. 

Happy Halloween!

Bweekend

 Last weekend was Alex's birthday weekend, or as Alex likes to call it -- bweekend. Considering last year was "the worst birthday of his life" and this is the first birthday I will be directly responsible for a person's overall happiness, my anxiety levels were through the roof.
Let me take you through our bweekend journey.

Friday night, I bought him some new pajamas (since he currently only wears horrible flannel Mario kart ones) and we ate strawberries with melted chocolate and some Martinellis while we watched the BYU game..

Saturday, we spent the afternoon helping my friend move. BUT we managed to make it to the pumpkin patch and go to dinner at Macaroni Grill. The best part of the weekend was when we ordered lobster ravioli and steak and only paid 43 cents. God bless gift-cards and restaurant mess ups. The rest of the night we spent carving pumpkins and watching Hocus Pocus, which I was appalled to learn Alex had never seen....

Alex got a pretty good haul this year. Thanks moms! If you look at his gifts, you'll notice that I married a 12-year old. 

As you can imagine, life with Alex is quite interesting. Here are just a few of my favorite things about Alex:

1. Almost every day Alex will say "Hold up I need to snapchat this." Last night he said "Is it weird that I save my snapchats to text my mom with?" This one was at Thai Pan.

 2.  His dancing skills. They are super weird and he does them in department stores and the library, but they're pretty sweet moves.
3.  He might just look cute as an old man...fingers crossed.

3. He is a diligent and thoughtful home teacher, despite his slightly odd, PhD Physics student companion. 

4. When I'm stressed out to the max he surprises me with flowers. 

5. We are sending copies of the Book of Mormon to David. This is the note that he wrote for the package.

6. He likes to cook waaaayyyyyy more than I do. Which is good because I'm a ditz in the kitchen.

7. He works very hard for us with very little sleep.

8. Today he made me pretend to cuddle with him at church so he could pick his nose.

Things I don't love: this face.

Happy Birthday Alex! I love you!

Festivities!

 Alex and I are really into free things. Mostly because we're poor. So, homecoming week is our new favorite tradition. It's been mine for the past four years, but now Alex has to participate. We got up super early on Saturday (8:30 am) and stood in line for 45 minutes to eat delicious and slightly unnerving bright blue pancakes (GO COUGARS!). We then saw a wonderful parade and got a lot of gross taffy, but also a lot of good candy.

I think Alex would like to point out that this is a relatively good haul considering we had 3,000 little kids intercepting our candy the whole time. Alex had no shame in stealing candy from a baby. 

We also let our creative juices flow this weekend. This is a picture of a package we are sending to my brother David on his mission in Florida. I have been a horrible sister as of late, which was pointed out to me by his letter to me a few weeks ago. Anyways, these are some dollar store finds for David for the holidays. If you're wondering why this picture is upside down, its because I don't know how to flip it. You can get the gist of it at a glance. Lots of crap he doesn't need or want. 

Last, but not least, we spent more time than we should have on decorating our home for Halloween. When we went to the dollar store to get some cheap looking headstones and witches hats, we found that it had been ransacked, probably by other poor college students. Therefore, we used a lot of construction paper. I'm quite pleased with our tacky and cheap decorations. 

This was Alex's creation. He wanted to make a pathway of bats that came in the window and through our bedroom....which did not happen. 

Also Alex's creation.  

If you can't tell what this is, its a paper chain. A classic.

A pumpkin chandelier. Alex made these too...as I write this I'm starting to realize how little decorating I actually did...

I taped these bats on! There's my contribution. I also made Alex buy these cute pumpkins. That is fake blood on our fake candles. (that Alex did)

Just wait til Christmas!

Empty Boxes and Empty Baskets

Alex and I are in that phase of marriage where we learn all of the little things about each other that drive us bonkers. A happy time in our lives. 

Yesterday morning I ate the last pop-tart in the box and left the empty box in the pantry. Horrible, I know. Alex was very distressed and flustered about this event. He brought it up several times throughout the day. 

I would have more sympathy except for this:

Every morning Alex walks all the way to our storage room and drops a little pile of dirty clothes right next to the laundry basket. Every single morning. And every morning I wake up and put this pile in our hamper...

I guess if I have to do that for the rest of my life, this other stuff will make up for it.

Camping and Labor Day

Alex and I like to think of ourselves as cleverer than the general population. Therefore, we decided to go camping the weekend before BYU started rather than on Labor Day. I wouldn't consider myself to be an outdoorsy camping kind of person in any sense, so Alex really took the reins on this one. However, I did know of a spot in Spanish Fork Canyon that I had been to multiple times for bonfires. Think luscious green pasture with a nice hill and flowing stream. We got the dead version. Despite all the cow poop, we had a good time. (This post may explain the video Alex posted of me throwing cow poop on Instagram.)

 Here is our decked out camp site. Alex spent the majority of his time making sure we had a fire and I'm eternally grateful for that.

 Dutch Oven Peach Cobbler: the best part about camping.

 Alex doesn't know I took this picture, which is creepy on my part. This accurately depicts how well we slept. Take that as you will.

Since we went camping the weekend before Labor Day, our three days off were pretty free, especially since we're married and don't have friends yet. We ended up going to see a Polynesian Cultural Celebration thing on Saturday. It turned out to be a bust but it was still enjoyable to walk around Thanksgiving Point. We also bought Alex a big coat so that he doesn't die in Provo this winter. We are both grateful for that.

 This is Alex at Cabelas, which was his first time. Luckily, he was mostly interested in the free fudge upstairs and not all of the guns and camouflage. I picked a winner.

We topped it all off with a BBQ on Monday night. Delicious.

First Things First

Blog Disclaimer: I'm just trying to fit in as a Mormon wife.

We have been very busy since our arrival to Provo two weeks ago. I was warned that we didn't have any AC in our apartment before, but I'm not sure we realized what that actually meant. My favorite part of our day is when we get to ride in the air conditioned car.  Needless to say, our first purchase was another fan.

That was not our last purchase, however. Alex and I embarked on a very long day with a very long shopping list the second day in town. (Surprisingly no one bought us the plunger on our registry...) Granted, we probably don't need a cute throw pillow and scone mix... but it's free right?

Here is the first look into our first apartment together. We feel right at home in our miniature church building. 

 We also managed to do important things like register our car and get insurance. (Go Us!) We now only belong to Arizona in spirit.

I guess the temple is important too... We have no excuses now that we can walk there in five minutes. I also think this is the best picture of us to date.