Brown paper packages tied up with strings...

I love getting packages in the mail. It makes me feel so special, especially since they're never junk mail. Getting mail in general is nice, but of course the bulk of what I take out of my mailbox is always advertisements and things addressed to the previous tenants (even though we've been here for well over a year). But packages are exciting, especially when you aren't expecting them. Today I got two! One I was expecting, and was excited for, the other was a total surprise.
This first one was the one I was expecting. My awesome sister-in-law, Julie, is done having children, so she's been working at clearing out the basement of all the kid things they still had, including her maternity clothes! So, she sent me a whole box full of her old clothes, which means I'm pretty much set for life in the maternity department! They're actually going to send us their crib as well, when their youngest gets his big boy bed. This second picture is of a really cute diaper cake that three of my high school friends sent me completely out of the blue. By that I mean I had no idea that they were sending me anything, obviously it wasn't totally out of the blue since I am pregnant... The really awesome thing is that it goes to show that some friends don't disappear. One of the friends and I had a bit of a fight after high school and lost touch almost completely. The other two I still talk to occasionally, but not nearly as often as I'd like. The group of us were pretty tight in high school though, and it's nice to know they're still thinking about me, as I do them!

I've started to get the nesting fever a little bit, although not nearly as much as Alli, which is probably a good thing since I can't redo my apartment like she did her house whether I want to or not. I have however started trying to really create a nursery, and haven't gotten very far yet. But, one thing that I've been wanting forever and finally got is a set of curtains! They're cute AND useful since they'll block out more light when she sleeps during the day.
On Saturday Mike and I had a spontaneous date evening. He took me for a drive up the mountains to look at the pretty fall colors, and we saw deer!


After the drive we went to dinner and then played games at home. It was a very nice, much needed relaxing day after the crazy and emotional week we/I had. I think I'll wait to update about that until we know more about what's going on, though, which hopefully will be soon.

Halloween is coming!

So life here has been pretty busy lately. We just had three home football games in a row, and now that both Mike and I are working for BYU traffic, we get to work all home games! So, basically we got about an extra 25 hours for this paycheck, which is nice except that we haven't had a real weekend in about a month. We're looking forward to this coming weekend and being extra lazy.

Yesterday we brought out the Halloween decorations and went crazy. This last Christmas I really wanted more holiday decorations, and Mike's mom got us a ton! Our apartment feels very festive now, it's great! This is on the outside of our door:

And this is our table. I had the leaves from last year and got the bowl on Saturday night (yay for Priesthood session and having a long needed girls night!) on sale at the Quilted Bear. The really cute placemats were part of my Christmas present from Mom Bevans.

The big pumpkin and bat both light up and were also part of the present, and the little pumpkins were just random things I've gotten over the years.

These are our two front doors (the actual front door and the balcony door) We hadn't redecorated the balcony door since the fourth of July, so it was about time!

The great thing about having worked at the Quilted Bear for so long before getting married is that when I saw something really cute come in, I could get it with my employee discount, and so had a few cute decorations coming into the marriage.

Not to mention the Christmas bonus that bought this bakers rack and then some.

Also not pictured were a couple of cute candy corn dish towels that were also part of the present. Speaking of candy corn, have any of you tried the seasonal Hershey kisses for fall? They have a candy corn one, and a pumpkin spice one. They're so good! The pumpkin ones taste like pumpkin pie and are Mike's favorite (besides the Easter coconut ones) and the candy corn ones taste like white chocolatey candy corn. Anyways, we recommend them!

Good movie, bad movie

First for the good movie: Star Trek. I was amazed, it wasn't at all like the TV show my dad used to watch all the time, and had the bonus of having an attractive main character! Mike had seen this already with my dad, but I hadn't, and he was very eager for me to see it after his first time going. Now we're just wondering if they're going to make a whole new series with these people.


Aaaand the bad movie, Night at the Museum 2. This was a big disappointment. We both loved the first one, but the second one was just lacking. It had some major discrepancies from the first movie and the things that were supposed to be really funny throughout the movie just really weren't that amusing to us. It certainly could have been worse, so it wasn't a total loss, and at least we waited until it was in the dollar theatre.

My oldest brother had given us the advice to see as many movies as we can before the baby comes because after it will be much harder to see any, and we'll get tired of Disney movies. It sounded like a good idea to us, plus a lot of movies had come out this summer that looked good, so we were excited to! This is a pretty good start, I think!

So, to start, here is a picture proving that I least wore the cap and gown! :)
Ok, this next part is going to be pretty much completely random. Lately, with the baby coming, I've been reminiscing about our wedding. I'm not really sure why, except probably because that was a huge milestone in my life, and right around the same date, two years later, I'll be reaching another milestone, the birth of our first baby. I am so excited for her to come, and with the approaching birth, I find myself with a lot of the same thoughts and feelings that I had two years ago when my wedding was approaching. I am so excited for this new stage, for another level of love to enter into my life, but am so scared at the same time. Before it was, "what if I'm a terrible wife... what if I'm not actually a good cook and he starves or something... what if his family hates me... what if.. what if... what if..." Now its more like "what if something goes wrong with the pregnancy or labor... what if she never sleeps... what if we don't know how to get her to stop crying..." and so on.

Anyways, I've been looking at our wedding photos this week, and I realized that since we started the blog so late, we never really put any on here. So, here are a (very) select few.

And as nervous as I am, I really am soooo excited, and I know deep down that everything will be fine, but what kind of mother would I be if I didn't worry, right? And I'm so glad that I didn't let any of the wedding nerves scare me away, because I am so glad to be married to Mike. He is a wonderful husband and friend. I love spending time with him and surprising him with things (and I love it when he surprises me with things :)) He's being remarkably patient with me through my pregnancy mood swings and cravings, which I'm very grateful for, and he's going to be a great father!

Visits from family

So, graduation was the 13& 14 of August, and it was a blast! Both sets of parents, plus my two oldest brothers came out for it. I don't have pictures yet, since I was rather preoccupied with, you know, graduating and all... But hopefully they'll come soon! Mike's parents were only here for a few days, but it was great to see them again, especially since we won't really see them again until the baby comes. Mark, Shauna, and Jackson came down for the actual ceremony as well. My brothers were also here only a few days, but again, it was great to see them. My oldest brother caused a little bit of stress because he went missing for about 8 hours, but, it'll make for a good story later, right? I also witnessed my first accident, and was glad they were in the car right behind me and knew what to do! My parents made a vacation out of it, and were here for a week and a half. It was so nice to spend the time with them! I only see them about twice a year now, so it was great. My mom and I did massive amount of shopping for maternity clothes and for the nursery. We got a glider and ordered a changing table, and I'm really excited for it to come!

My parents also wanted to do a little sight seeing, so we went to Promontory Point (isn't that super old-western sounding) which is where the Golden Spike is. Here's where East met West: Here's a belly shot for those who were wanting to see it. I really just feel like I look fat right now, not pregnant...

Here's West:

And East:

And double East:

And East meeting West again!

There goes East. I thought it was pretty cool that the trains actually run, even though they're just replicas of the originals.

So, the 19th was my parents anniversary, so we went out for dinner (actually, we went out for dinner a lot... I haven't eaten that amount of food in a loooong time) to Los Hermanos. Our waitress was my freshman roommate, Kelly, and we finally met her new husband as well. Just to warn you, if you ever feel like getting nachos there, make sure you have about ten people to share with. You will never finish them by yourself, even with your husband helping you!

After my parents left, we had one day of down time, and then Kim (Mike's younger sister) and Kelly came to visit with their kids. It was also great to see them again, since it's been a year since we saw them last. We went to the zoo one day, and had a great time. Here's Mike as a turtle:

And wrestling an alligator:

And here's our mascot about to pounce at us. He seriously sat like that just staring at me for like five minutes!

Me, Mike, and baby with the cougar.

And that's all for now! Hopefully I'll get pictures of graduation soon, so that I can prove I walked!

Cupcakes and weddings

So I'm not the most creative person ever, so when I do something that is relatively creative or cool, I have to share it with the world. Our friend Brent's birthday was this week so I made him these cupcakes:

Aren't they awesome? I wanted to get cool colorful sprinkles to go on top, but Macey's has a terrible cake decorating section, apparently, and I didn't want them badly enough to go to more stores.... But anyways, I was very proud of myself, and I won't mention the number of cupcakes that I ate...

This month is a month of weddings. On Friday my old roommate, Jenn, and a boy from our freshman ward, Nick, got married. It was pretty cool because it was the first temple wedding Mike and I have actually been to, besides our own, of course. We're very happy for them, and she looked absolutely beautiful!

And, it was a beautiful day, which is great because it's been upper 90's for like a couple of weeks here.

Saturday my freshman roommate, Kelly, got married, although I had to miss her reception because the store was crazy and I couldn't get out. This coming Saturday another girl from my freshman ward is getting married as well! Tis the season!

It's a Girl!!

Don't you hate it when the title says everything you wanted to say? But yes, it's a girl, and we're super excited! Everything was there and functioning that was supposed to be there and functioning, so everything is going well!