Anniversary and New Babies

Well, I guess I'm not very good at keeping this updated.

October 5th was mine and Dallon's first anniversary. I can't believe it's already been a whole year! I'm excited for our future together and amazed at how fast time goes by! We went to park city for the weekend where we visited the olympic park, did some swimming, browsed main street, and found the most amazing candy isle (ever). We had a lot of fun and were able to stay up late eating candy and watching tv, haha. My mom also bought us a groupon to Cornbellys to go through the maze and the haunted houses. We wandered around the maze for a while then took a shortcut to get us out that ended up cutting us into a whole different maze! Oops! The haunted house was SO FUN though and it was such a fun night! Also, we haven't tried our cake top yet! I think we are both dreading eating year old cake...

Work pretty much takes up most of our time...

Dallon is working IT at the University Guest House now. They transitioned him into the position over the summer but now he is the full time IT guy. It is a really great opportunity for him and he seems to enjoy it most days.  They are even setting him up to take some Certification classes that can lead to a pay raise and hopefully/eventually a better job!

We finished transitions at the day care a couple weeks ago. The center moves the children by classes instead of age so every september/october everyone moves up and the baby room gets a fresh batch of babies. As of the first week of october we have had 7 babies. The oldest is 5 mo. and the youngest 8 weeks and next week we will get the 8th baby who will be 6 wks! Two are premie twins who are on heart monitors which was nerve wracking at first but we haven't had an incident yet so I'm not too worried about them. And people are always asking: there are two adults, Me and the Lead Teacher, the ratio is 1:4.

All I can say about that is WOW! Props to all you guys who are having babies right now because I came home the first week crying to Dallon about how much I dislike babies. Really, it just takes some time to get used to having so many little humans screaming bloody murder in your ears while you try to figure out why they are so upset. I have already been puked on and peed on and I come home smelling like spit up everyday (but I still haven't been pooped on!!!). They really are super super cute though and I feel like I'm learning so much from them! I'm just glad I get to come home to Dallon, our TV, sleep and free time.

RIP Murky Fish

MURK LURKER Dec. 25, 2010- July 20, 2013

Ode to Murky

By Wendy Hughes 

One lone fish, in a pretty little dish, was given as a gift 3 years ago.
Named by the brother, cleaned by the mother, lived in three places it is so.
He was midnight blue, a water bowl for Luna too, we watched him swim and grow.
But his life is now through, he will be missed it is true, bon voyage down the drain he now flows!

buuut. 
Now we have a NEW fish Casper!
He is really active and is always watching us swim around. Plus he is a double tail betta so his fins are bigger and prettier! Plus Plus, he is a weird skin color that is kind of creepy/awesome. 

Other than the not-so-tragic loss of my fish everything is going well! 

Long post with some little updates

Alright, lets get started:

I graduated from the U with my bachelors degree in may! I always thought having a degree would be a little more monumental but I don't really feel much different. Though- I am very thankful for my education and I think it has helped me expand how I perceive my circumstances as well as encouraged new ideas and ways to think about things (especially since I took a whole course on understanding beliefs and how to better look at the world). I really enjoyed the social sciences as well as my professors and teachers who took me through my education. It was fun and I'm thinking that's why it was so quick and easy. One of my favorite things was in a class we had to analyze parent child relationships in movies. My reports consisted of movies like Despicable Me and Star Wars (where there are some serious daddy issues). I also took a class on family violence where we talked about the prison system (creepy) as well as brutal convicts and studies done analyzing them- that was probably my favorite course! Oh, and how can I forget my course where we created group blogs with fun articles backed by research (click on this sentence to see it), that was fun too!

 Towards the first of the year I started working as a substitute at the YWCA daycare. Once I graduated I switched to being the full time assistant teacher in the infant room. Right now we have 7 babies who range between 10-13 months. They are so cute and it is such a fun age (other than the new one who has been crying for 4 weeks straight!)! I've been able to watch them grow and develop so rapidly it is so amazing! I have pictures and some videos of them on my phone and I love showing people and bragging about the babies. I can't imagine how bad I'll be when it's my own kid! In Septemberish we will get a new class of babies and all of these guys will move up into older classes. I'm a little worried because the new ones will most likely range anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months and will be much smaller and dependent for care.

We bought a new car! A 2008 Nissan Xterra. After going through a huge mess with the Jeep (a.k.a. Lemon) we decided we wanted to invest in something nicer, newer, and with a better reputation. We have really enjoyed this car and it has met all of our expectations (so far)! Lets just cross our fingers for the winter time. 

Dallon and I went Camping to Moon lake mid June. It was a lot of fun and a really pretty place to visit. We were able to take the Xterra with our bike rack and take our bikes. We unsuccessfully took my new crossover bike mountain biking (terrifying) but we also biked on the road and some more established trails around us. Dallon was even able to take his new mountain bike out on some rough trails.... before it got a stolen the next week while we were downtown. After a police report, going to pawn shops, constantly checking KSL, Ebay, and craigslist Dallon now has a new new bike. Now it just has to stop raining. 

We went camping with my family down by blanding in the Blue Mountains. It was a lot of fun and the wildlife there was amazing. We literally had deer all over our camp as well as a limp deer who would eat right out of your hand! My dad got a video of him feeding "gimpy" an Oreo, it's pretty amazing. We put around 100 miles on our four wheelers in two days and had a train of 8 4-wheelers each with two people on them. I bet that was pretty amazing. We even found a little patch of snow high up in the mountains on one ride! It was so nice to get out of the heat and up in to some beautiful country. 

Getting ready to leave the visitors center in Monticello 

Me trying to hitch a ride on our way out

Life is busy! 

-Kaylee

2 Dads

With all that has been happening in regards to same sex marriage I thought this was funny.

I recently started subbing in a day care. The children range from 6 weeks to 5 years old, and they are always saying hilarious things (the ones who can talk, anyway). Today I was subbing for the pre K class (about 5 years old). I was sitting at a table with three kids and this goes down:

A little boy draws a picture of his dad then says he want to draw another picture of his dad. One little girl says “two dads! That’s funny! You can’t have two dads!” And is making a big deal about how he has two dads and how funny that is. He says “I don’t have two dads!” And she keeps making a big deal out of it and laughing about how funny it would be to have two dads. I tell her “Some people have two dads.” Not thinking about only gay parenting but many children from divorces have two (or more) dads. She agreed then went on to tell me that some people could have 4 dads! Or even 100 dads! They laughed about how funny 100 dads was for a while then I asked them what they would do with 100 dads. The other girl at the table said something to the effect of, “If I had 100 dads I would share them with someone who doesn’t have a dad who likes to hug dads.” So I say, “that is very thoughtful of you to share your dads.” Without any hesitation she continues on to tell the boy at the table that he couldn't kill any of the dads though. He said he wouldn't but continues with something like this, "If you killed your dad you wouldn't have any more dads, and if you killed your mom you wouldn't have any more dads, then if you killed yourself then there would be no one in the house."
The second little girl replied "There would be dead people in the house." 

Then, luckily, the subject changed. 

And that's what 5 year olds think of having two dads. 

Broadway Street

Our little apartment has been really nice. It's only a one bedroom but it has a lot of storage space.  

We live on Broadway which is kind of fun when people ask our address. Plus it's a step up from telling people I live on Gudgell Court  a.k.a. good sale, gud shell, gud gull, ...etc.   Plus it's in a great location and we're only a short walk from everything downtown. 

Our little bathroom with no outlets in or near it. We also have the outside corner apartment so our bathroom window is right by the back door and bike rack. We can hear people very clearly when their outside so no doubt they can hear us pretty well too...

I took this on a day i was feeling cute. Our little kitchen!

It's not always this messy.
We just have some rearranging to do since putting up the Christmas decorations. 

Our little manger for Christmas along side our Bonsai, a little ruin from our cruise and a candle of mine. It's on our bookshelf in the kitchen. You can kind of see the cookbooks on one side and my reading/school books on the other. 

Our little christmas wreath! We used to have a christmas clock on the wall next to it. It was the kind that would play a Christmas song every hour. It was obnoxious so we kept that feature off. BUT. hahaha. I turned it on on my way to class last week when I knew Dallon would be getting home from work in an hour or so. What I didn't know was that he would fall asleep on the couch, be violently woken up by the music and then proceed to rip it off the wall and take the batteries out. I got a good laugh out of it when he told me but now we can't find the nail it was hanging on. No more christmas clock but at least he didn't break it!

Setting up the tree!

Our Christmas Presents

We talk a lot about what we'll do when our lease expires but we both really like this little place. The only really bad thing is the radiant heat. It used to be too hot and our apartment was burning up the whole time, but now it's cold all the time! Not to mention the banging. The kitchen is the worst. It's like there is someone with a hammer trying to get through our pipes.

I'm also getting super excited about Christmas. I did most of my shopping yesterday and the house looks wonderful. I just put a pine scent in one of my scentsies and it smells fantastic! School is practically over too! It's going to be so nice to see everyone so soon!

Open House & Honeymoon

We flew out to Texas the sunday after our reception and wedding. It was the second time I have ever been on an airplane! I didn't think it was that bad but Dallon said it was one of the shakier flights he has been on. He also slept most of the way while I watched the inflight movie.   

After our honeymoon we had a s mall open house in the suburb area where Dallon's parents live. It was super cute! I guess someone in the ward had done a brown and yellow reception not to long ago so they had the chair ties and a couple other very fitting decorations. Sylvia put soo much into it to make it so cute! She made almost ALL the food pictured above as well as the center pieces and a couple other decorations around the room. Not too many people showed up and most who did didn't even know Dallon (he only lived in Texas for a few months). I think everyone had a good time though and I ate like 6 chicken salad sandwiches. 

A friend in the ward did my hair. It turned out really cool. Just a bunch of braids all intertwined. 

the family! It was so green and it seemed there were water canals everywhere!

Another friend in the ward went out with us and took some nice pictures. 

My bouquet smelled amazing!

The cruise was awesome! It's amazing how much they can put onto a big boat! It was like a mini floating vegas. They even had the casino placed strategically so that it was the easiest way to get around the ship. There were fancy shows that we went too. One was this vegas style magic show that was completely insane. I also could not get over how intimidatingly ripped all the on board dancers were... There were also shows where they used the guests to make a fool out of themselves, they were really entertaining as well. 

On the fancy stairs in our matching shirts.

On the outside deck under the life boats. They were really large and were supposed to hold a ton of people. There is also a night where you dress up fancy. Some people looked really extravagant. I borrowed the dress from one of his sisters. haha. 

Dallon ate TWO steaks every night. 

We bought a light up miniature ship! Just kidding! This is Dallon holding the Disney cruise that passed us on our last night on deck. 

Mexico was so amazing! Now when I see pictures of those beautiful white beaches with crystal clear water I can actually understand how amazing it is there. All the beaches we passed were so ideal it's strange that things like that are so natural and everywhere!

This was on our first shore excursion. A fresh water spring that was so clear and beautiful! There were fish in there that would nibble on your feet if you let them soak. The only bad thing is once I got out of the water I never dried!

So picture perfect I promise it's not photoshopped! 

Our dune buggy! We rode in a caravan of these for our second shore excursion! Dallon hit all of the puddles along the way soaking us and another couple we rode with in white salty water.

To cliche to not take a picture.

We went snorkeling! It was cool to see some of the fish and other things in the ocean but the water was nasty. You know how you see fake snow on movies and the people are fine but all you can think about is how unbearably cold that would be? Now I feel like that with salt water. All those movies with beautiful beach scenes and all I can think about is "Don't get that in your mouth!!!" I turned sideways to look back for Dallon while snorkeling and got a mouthful. It was soooo nasty. 

We had a wonderful time! I know Dallon already wants to go on another cruise and I just want to go stay on a nice beachside resort somewhere tropical. I'm so glad we got this experience it was such a good time!

October 5th

Thanks so much to everyone who was able to come out to the temple or to our reception. It was such a wonderful day and everything turned out so perfect! We could not have had more beautiful weather or a more flawless day. People often share their wedding disaster stories but I honestly can not think of anything that went wrong. (Though after the reception I didn't have a toothbrush and neither of us had a real change of clothes. From the hotel in Manti to my parent's house to the reception- I had lost clothes everywhere!)

We had our luncheon at the Manti House. 

The fish were an interesting idea. They initially started as a joke because I had heard of people doing fish as a center piece at a reception. We decided to go for it anyway because it would be fun and feeder fish are inexpensive.... well.... let's just say we had A LOT of little fish die. I almost feel bad. So if anyone is wanting to do fish at their reception just do betas and then give them to people when it's all said and done. We didn't give the gold fish away in fear that they would die and make the little kids sad. I did really like how they turned out though and I'm glad we did it!

Wedding cake, which I found on pinterest. We literally shoved 2 sunflowers in the top for the cake topper. I thought it was a really beautiful cake!

The guest book started out as a joke as well. I didn't want a fancy scrapbook because I didn't want to put it together- since, lets be honest, I probably would not have looked at all that much. And I didn't want just a signature book because I hardly remember names. I was looking at scenic Utah books and we were contemplating a temple book but just could not find anything we liked. Then, Dallon suggested a joke book! He wasn't very serious but we all loved the idea and found this book on amazon! People even asked if it was meant to be a signature book since it worked out so perfectly! Before the wedding we read through most of the jokes and got a good giggle over them. Dallon also made the little vase with the pens in it in his ceramics class and I glazed it!

All the yummy bread at our reception (which we didn't really get to try) with apple juice and hot apple cider.  Dallon's friend and relative, Julie Jones,   did the breads, cake and the backdrops- We could not have had all this good food without her! 

The jams were such a hit! I cannot believe how much everyone loved the jams. I loved them too. My mom might have said that WE made them but really SHE made them, all 300. I helped with the apricot (and burnt a batch). They turned out so good! We ate them leading up to the reception because we knew that we had made a little too much. I'm glad everyone was able to take a jar (or 5) but we did not actually get any :(. I'm only sad because I wanted to keep a cute jar for display or something. We can always get more jam next time my mom makes some and I think she kept a few cute jars too. 

My cousin, Sarah, along with Dallon's cousin McKaylee played the piano through the entire reception! I was so glad to have live piano music I think it added so much!

Is the first dance as awkward to watch as it was for us to dance?? And thank you to Brenda Bigelow, she did the ceiling with the tool, lights and leaves. That made everything so beautiful. 

Dallon does not look please about the decorations on the car.  

We had a wonderful reception and so many people came! I was so glad it was so loud and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Thanks again to everyone who came and helped make our day special! We started on thank you cards and by started I mean we've done about 30 out of 100 or so. Being married is fun too and we had an amazing honeymoon on our western Caribbean cruise, I'll post about that another day!