2012 Year in Review

2012 was a good year, one of my most favorites I've had.  Although, as good as it was we did receive our fair share of trials.  From of all of the good and bad, I learned.  Learned so much.  I'm still learning.  Aren't we always?  I'm looking forward to what 2013 will bring and I have a lot of goals for myself and my little family, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Here's a look back at 2012:
January.
Bryce and I were engaged, we got engaged on Christmas 2011.  We spent nearly every night together, lost a lot of sleep staying up too late, hated saying goodbye, and started making plans for married life.  I started getting ready for our wedding.  I shopped for dresses, caterers, photographers, etc.  We kept our plans for our wedding simple, extremely simple, and it made planning a breeze.

 

February.

We were still engaged, and wishing time would go by more quickly so we could just be married already.  We celebrated Valentine's together and Bryce cooked dinner for me, for the first time.  He earned a lot of points that night. I had a couple wedding showers and people were so generous.  We got so many gifts to help us start a new life as a married couple. 

March.
We finally got married, on the 10th at 8 am to be exact.  We went on a short honeymoon to Salt Lake City.  We were right in the middle of the semester for Bryce and we decided just to do something small and go somewhere later in the summer when Bryce didn't have school.  This ended up being the best decision.  I got sick the 2nd day of our honeymoon, so sick.  We watched a lot of movies and cuddled in our hotel room and it was still nice just being together and being married.  We moved into our first apartment, a little basement apartment close to work for me and school for Bryce.  I decorated, organized, and reorganized to my heart's content.

 

April.

I learned how to be a wife.  I cooked dinner, did laundry, and made a weekly cleaning schedule.  I'm a serious clean freak and a bit OCD, my husband learned this.  He is still patient with me about it.  I made homemade whole wheat bread for the first time.  I got promoted to team-lead at my job.  Bryce worked part-time and finished up his semester in school.  We started watching Lost on Netflix....bad idea I wasted so much of life on this.

May.
We enjoyed the warmer weather, went on dates to the temple, went on picnics, flew kites, and celebrated Bryce's birthday week.  I gave him 22 gifts throughout the week.  I think I had more fun planning all of them then Bryce did receiving them.  

June.
We went swimming at pine view reservoir.  I worked. Bryce worked, mostly nights.  I read lots of books and did lots of crafts while Bryce was working.  We went camping with my sister and her husband.  It was really fun, I wish we would've gone camping more.

 

July.

We celebrated Independence Day with my family.  We ate snow cones.    Bryce started building an entryway bench for me, at my request.  Bryce went on a week long camping trip with his brothers.  I read a lot and watched gossip girl re-runs since Bryce wasn't there to complain about it.  We got our wedding pictures back!!

 

August.
We went to Disneyland for a belated honeymoon.  It was the best.  Seriously. It was just so much fun spending a week in my favorite place with my best friend.  I want to go back every month. At the end of August Bryce started school again and we had a back to school feast.

 

September.

Between Bryce's work and school schedule he was gone almost every night except for Saturday nights.  I lived for them.  We went on lots of Costco dates when I would do our weekly grocery shopping every Saturday.  I found lots of cute little messages Bryce would leave to lift my spirits.

October.
I decorated our apartment for Halloween.  We watched Halloween movies, my favorite being Hocus Pocus.  We made caramel apples.  We celebrated my birthday week.  I turned 23!  We dressed up as 'Beauty and the Beast' for Halloween.  

November.
We went on a triple date with some of my old roommates to City Creek in Salt Lake.  We spent Thanksgiving with my family and the boys had the annual clay pigeon shoot.  I took Bryce Black Friday shopping for the first time.  We went to Festival of Trees.  I got really excited for Christmas.  I bought a new lens for my camera and signed up for an online photography class by Nicole's Classes to take in February.  I've been meaning to do this for a long time, since I bought my camera a couple years ago and I'm just finally getting around to it.

December.
We decorated our first Christmas tree together.  Bryce took 8 finals for 6 classes and finished up the school semester.  Bryce finished the bench he started for me in July during his break from school.  We went to the lights at temple square.  We started new traditions.  We celebrated our first Christmas together.  I got in my first accident during a huge snow storm the day after Christmas, only the passenger side bumper and tire were damaged so I got off lucky.  We spent lots and lots of time together and enjoyed being married during the holidays. 

2012 was a good year!

-Kami

Christmas

Since it was our first Christmas married, Bryce and I decided to start some new holiday traditions we would do with our family and continue to do when we have kids.  The first thing we decided to do for gifts was stick with getting four gifts, one from each of the following categories: 'Want, wear, need, read'.  I first read about this tradition on Dandee's blog a few years ago and always kept it in the back of my mind as something I wanted to do when I had my own family.  It made our Christmas lovely & simple and helped us not get caught up in the commercialism of the holiday season.

 We went to the Salt Lake Temple the weekend before Christmas and did a session and then walked around to see the lights.  This was one of my favorite things and is something I would really like to do every year to help remember the Savior and the whole reason we even celebrate. 


 
We also decided exchange ornaments on Christmas Eve.  These were our ornaments this year.  Bryce gave me the gold key and I gave him the Batman ornament, obviously.

My mom carried on the tradition of Christmas Eve pajamas this year, but once we have our own kids I plan on continuing the tradition in my own family.

On Christmas morning we slept in until ten then woke up, made cinnamon rolls, and opened presents.  Bryce's gifts were Want: gun cleaning kit. Wear: striped american eagle shirt. Need: sander. Read: The Bourne Identity Trilogy.  My gifts were Want: jewelry box. Wear: zara peplum tee shirt. Need: calendar. Read: Les Miserables.

Besides our gifts we exchanged with each other, we were given so much by our parents and grandparents.  Our families are the best and spending time with them during the holidays is my favorite thing.  The holidays seem to fill me with gratitude.  The presents were extremely fun to give and receive but the part I loved most was getting to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ with Bryce and our families.  

-Kami

Repost- Hair: A Journey through the Color Spectrum

Bryce and I got hair cuts and I also got mine colored this past Saturday by my sweet sister.  She is the best and she does such an awesome job.  I didn't do anything drastic, I just stuck to the usual dark brown I do every couple of months to shine it up and cover my roots.  I was reminded of a post I wrote on my old blog a couple years ago when I was still single and had a traumatic hair experience so I thought I would do a re-post.

Hair: A journey through the color spectrum 

 (proof of the once upon a time blonde hair)

Once upon a time, there was a girl, her name might have started with a k and rhymed with whammy. She was a twenty one year old enjoying college life, preparing for the future. She was what you might picture as a typical girl in college. She had brown hair, which might not seem so significant now, but it is very important to later in the story. Years before when the girl was younger she used to have a full head of blonde hair. But the older she grew, the darker her hair went. Around the age of seventeen she decided to fully embrace the darker hue. She quit highlighting her hair and instead dyed it a pretty dark brown color. She felt like the color suited her well and she was content with her new life as a brunette. Several years passed. She graduated high school, moved away to college, transferred universities, and moved back home to finish up school. She started getting a little bored with her mundane life of school and work and decided she needed a change. She saw a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow and her hair was a beautiful, bright shiny blonde shade. The girl knew her hair needed to be that exact color. This would definitely add the needed excitement to her life.

(this is what she was going for)

So she went to her sister, who conveniently was a hairdresser. She explained the color she wanted her hair, and they dove into the process. Her sister explained since she had been coloring her hair brown for several years it might be a little difficult to bleach it back to blonde, but it shouldn’t be impossible it just might take a few times. The first thing done was a bleach wash, which would bleach out all of the brown color in her hair. The girl washed out her hair and looked in the mirror. She was distraught at what she saw. Her hair was a sickly, mustard yellow color. She looked like the Joker on batman.

(it was really quite something awful)

She was a little hysterical but her sister reassured her that they just needed to highlight and tone it, and it would be a pretty blonde color. So the next process of highlighting was done, unfortunately with no better results. Her hair was definitely NOT blonde. It was yellow, gross, and she was close to tears with her sickly yellow hair.

(picture something like this)

Her sister explained she probably had too much dye load from coloring it brown for so long so it didn’t process the way it was supposed to. The girl decided she had made a horrible mistake and they needed to color it back brown as soon as possible. They couldn’t put any more color on it that night or it would probably fry and break her hair off. She definitely did not want this to happen. To prevent any more damage from happening to her hair she would need to wait at least a day or two to try and fix it. This meant the girl would have to go to work and school with mustard hair. She was not excited about this, but she disguised it the best she could. She slicked it back into a bun and put a thick headband on that covered most of her head. Despite a lot of self-consciousness, she made it through the day. The next night they tried to color it brown again. They applied the color and let it sit for thirty minutes. She washed her hair and hesitantly looked in the mirror again, not knowing what to expect. Instead of a dark brown color, her hair was now a light brownish orange.

(something like this)

This was not good. The girl bit her lip and held back tears. It was only hair she kept telling herself, they could still fix it. Her sister felt extremely bad that her hair was not working, but she concluded that they hadn’t used a dark enough brown color. She would have to wait ANOTHER FEW DAYS with orange hair before they could try and fix it again. So she stuck to her bun and headband hairdo and unwillingly made it through the next couple days of work (she did skip class to make herself feel a little better). Friday night (five days after the beginning of this horrible experience) they dyed her hair back to the dark brown color it was before. The girl learned from the whole ordeal that the grass is not always greener on the other side. Blonde hair did bring excitement to her life, but it wasn’t quite the excitement she was hoping for. She decided she was completely content with life as a brunette and vowed to never try and change it again.

Since I'm sure you will all want to know here is what it looked like when we were finished, finally back to normal:

-Kami

Where are you snow?

 
My house is totally ready for Christmas.  I fully prepared it with homemade snow globes, garlands, stockings, and glitter snowflakes on our walls.  Our presents are even all wrapped and under the tree, and I think I've already watched every Christmas movie on Netflix.
 

 

But there is still something of huge significance missing. Utah, you are failing me!  Where is the snow?  You should look like a shiny, sparkly north pole by now!  Weather man is telling me to expect snow this Saturday.  If it doesn't happen, you and I are going to have a talk.

-Kami

Christmas Adventure

  

Last Saturday morning I opened my weary eyes and smiled as I remembered our plans for the day.  I rolled over and lovingly poked Bryce until he gave in to the annoyance and grumbled, "I'm awake already!"  

"Good," I replied, "We have so much to do today.  We need to get up and get going!"

"Ugh," he grumbled again, "Can't it wait another hour."

"No, it can't even wait five more minutes.  This is a very important day!"  My remark was applauded by the irritating vibration noises of a cell phone.  Bryce rolled out of bed and picked up his phone just as the call ended. 

"It was brother 'so-and-so' from the ward," he mumbled distractedly as he dialed some keys on the phone.

"Don't call back!" I cried.  A call from brother 'so-and-so' (obviously not his real name) on a Saturday only meant one thing.

"Too late," Bryce whispered back as a muffled voice picked up on the other end. A short conversation was exchanged and I sighed loudly making my frustrations known.

"I have to go help a family in the ward move," Bryce stated as he set his phone back on the dresser. 

"I know," I pouted, "that's the only reason you ever get called on Saturdays.

Bryce laughed as he pulled me in to a hug. 

"It will be fast, I promise.  I'll still be back in time."

***4 HOURS LATER***

Bryce returned from his Saturday duties and we finally started out on our little Saturday adventure.  We played Christmas songs as we drove and sang as obnoxiously as we could to get us in the holiday spirit.  We drove for what felt like a hundred miles (okay probably two and a half) and made it to the last treacherous turn that would lead us to our destination.  Treacherous, I might add, due to the ridiculously long line of cars ahead of us in the turning lane and sadly not due to a snowy mountainous landscape thwarting our way.  

We pulled our car in to the vast expanse of black and attentively parked as far away as we could.  You know, to get the full experience.  I squealed with excitement as I looked out the window.  Bryce walked around and opened my door.  I pulled on my mittens and firmly adjusted my hood over my ears to shield me from the bitter cold.  Bryce laughed as he accompanied me across the parking lot in his short sleeve T-shirt and jeans.

As we walked into the fenced area I smiled at Bryce and declared it a Christmas Oasis.  There were rows and rows of majestic evergreen beauties all tucked together just waiting to be picked and taken home.

Bryce shrugged, "Yeah I think this home depot has more trees than we saw at the other lot. It will work."

I carefully scrutinized every single tree; well, every single tree in the $24.97 row, college student budget you know.  

"Okay this one," I decided.  "No wait, never mind I think the first one is better."

Bryce hastily agreed before I could change my mind again, "Oh yeah, the first one is way better.  That's the one!" 

He dutifully marched our tree up to the cashier, handed over the ticket and cash, and the tree officially became ours.  We loaded our all five feet of our tree into the back of our ford focus hatchback, and took our new baby home.

We proudly set our very first tree up in a perfect little corner and decorated her extravagantly with dollar store ornaments, paper doilies, a homemade pom-pom garland, and lots and lots of lights.


Our adventure may not have been quite as gallant as our original plan of lumberjacking it into the mountains to chop down our own tree, but thanks to my flair for the dramatic we still made it quite an adventure all the same. 

Meet Cordelia.  Cordelia the Christmas Tree.

-Kami

Festival of Trees

This week for our date night- instead of the usual me reading or watching a movie by myself while Bryce studies-we went to the Festival of Trees!

 

 

I have gone to the Festival of Trees several times, and I used to volunteer at it back in high school for National Honor Society, but it was Bryce's first time.  At first he thought it was a really girly event.  I explained to him that all the trees were donated in memory of patients at Primary Childrens Medical Center or loved ones who had passed away and all the proceeds went to Primary Childrens.  Then he thought it was pretty cool.

 

(This is what happens when I ask my husband to take the picture)

 

 

 (The typical BYU vs. U of U rivalry ever present in Utah)

They also have a gingerbread section that we thought was really neat.  There are some seriously talented people who are very generous with their time and efforts.

 

Sometimes, well a lot of the time now that finals are approaching, I feel like I saw Bryce way more when we were dating then now being married. Needless to say we were long due for a date night.  And just to clarify, even with the lack of time together, married life is still much much better than life when we were dating.  Especially not having to say goodbye at the end of every night.  That is one of the best things.  Instead we get to say goodnight and goodmorning every single day.  It's the best.  

-Kami 

Halloween Birthday!

This week was my birthday week.  Yesterday I turned twenty-three.  It's a strange thought that I am almost to my mid-twenties, but an exciting one all the same.  I love the stage of life I am in and I can't wait to see what the future brings for my little family.

First for my birthday, Bryce took me to see Hotel Transylvania on Monday night.  We both loved it and laughed through the whole movie.


On Halloween, the morning of my actual birthday, Bryce woke up and surprised me by making me breakfast; an omelet with turkey sausage.  Then my sweet co-workers brought crispy creme doughnuts to work to celebrate!

After work Bryce and I changed into our costumes and went trick-or-treating....to three houses: Bryce's parents, my grandparent's, and my parent's.  We dressed up as Beauty and the Beast.  I wore my prom dress, that I can still barely fit into!  And for Bryce's costume I found a wolf-man wig and attached horns I made out of tinfoil, masking tape, and black paint, and I made a cape for him out of blue taffeta.  I was really happy with how the costumes turned out, and I am glad Bryce was such a good sport dressing up with me.

After spending the night with family we came home and Bryce spoiled me with presents. He got me a new book for my cloth bound classic collection, a few new shirts, and he is working on a bench that he hasn't quite been able to finish yet. 

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, not only because it's my birthday but since it is kind of the kick off for the holiday time of year, and this year's definitely lived up to my high expectations.  Here's to being another year older and hopefully somewhat wiser!

-Kami