Changes

Thought I should post something now, cause once school starts I don't know if I'll have much time.

Nothing too thrilling is going on for Nate and me right now, but that's a-ok. There are some major changes going on for our families, however.

Nate's family now lives in Costa Rica. Apparently they have an awesome little house with a pool and a separate guest house (for us when we visit!) and it's great. Everything out there is of course in Spanish, so his sisters are going to be pros. I'm jealous of everything.

My parents just got to Virginia yesterday. They are going to live in Nate's parents' house while they're in Costa Rica for the next 5 years. The plan is that in exchange for not paying rent, my parents are going to fix up the house and make it super cute, cause it needs a little help.

In the meantime, Nate and I feel a little... in limbo. If we go back to Escondido to visit, I wont have my own house! We'd have to stay with my grandma, or in the Cloyd's motorhome (which is fine, just different). There might even already be someone else living in my house. That's so weird! And if we go to VA, we'd get to stay at Nate's house, but it would be all changed and his family wouldn't be there, and it would really kinda be MY parents' house instead. Weird.

But we're happy for our families and think all these changes are for the better. Hopefully once I graduate in April, Nate can do an internship in Costa Rica so we can be with his family and practice our Español. Then, after Nate graduates we can leave P-town and go live (for free!) at Nate's house in VA with my parents, while going to Grad school at George Mason. I am SO ready to be done with school and move away, even though I'll be sad to leave our awesome friends. But being in the DC area, there's no shortage of museums for me to possibly work at.

And I'm SO ready for school to start because it means I'm that much closer to being done! Thank goodness.

So, that's pretty much it... oh, and Sara is back out here, so it's been fun hanging out with her. Spencer wont be here for another few days, and Nate is really restless waiting for him. He hasn't seen him in over two years! He's really excited and I'm glad he gets to have his "widdle brudder" back.

Dos Años

As of today Nate and I have been married for two whole years! haha, sooo long, I know. But it seems so much shorter! Time has flown by like crazy.

This day two years ago started out a little frantic, getting everyone all ready to go to the temple while others prepared for the reception under big sister Yara's guidance. The night before had been wonderful, full of family members telling both embarrassing and endearing stories about Nate and me, and there was lots of crying and laughing all around. We were all up late and I wasn't really able to sleep due to excitement. I also had My Fair Lady's "I'm gettin' married in the mornin!" running on repeat in my head, so needless to say, it was a little hard to get up, and if I wasn't 110% excited, I might have tried to sleep in.

But we were sealed in the temple that morning (which was wonderful) and everyone cried and laughed again, and I'm pretty sure my dad whispered a threat to Nate that he "better take care of his daughter" as we left the sealing room.Then Nate and I had to endure the taking of thousands of pictures and were almost late for our own ring ceremony and reception. At least we knew they couldn't start without us. We were quite sick of the endless posing in the blazing California August sun, but I'm so glad to have the photos now.Then we had our ring ceremony. I got to spend some time hidden away with all 8 of my lovely bridesmaids while we waited for people to be seated, and Mom made sure to feed me a few early refreshments to make sure I didn't keel over halfway down the aisle from heat stroke and starvation and lack of breathing space from the dress. (It's really fun to have everyone doting over you for a whole day!) Being with my girls before the ceremony was one of my favorite parts of the day.

Then the music began and the procession went, and people were crying again, and I couldn't stop smiling. Nate's dad presided and did the little speech thingy and told Nate to shower me with flowers and treats as often as possible, and I said "MMhmm!" and everyone laughed and it was all perfect and wonderful.Then there was more picture-taking followed by music, food, and dancing. When I danced with my Dad we were crying, but Nate and his mom were grinning ear to ear (such is the difference between daddy's girls and momma's boys). There was delicious cake and my brother caught the garter and my Kaycie caught the bouquet, and then we got ready to leave. We left under flying rice and cheerios and tried to make our escape, BUT! during the partying my family was super sneaky and while the outside of our car looked relatively untouched, the inside was full of crumpled newspaper! (A retaliation on me from some certain past pranks.) We couldn't leave until we had dumped it all over the driveway (and left the mess for everyone else to clean up), but we finally did.Hard to believe all that happened two years ago! It feels like it was yesterday. Even our first anniversary feels like it was only a week ago. Last year we were driving from Virginia to Utah, and happened to be in Topeka on the 11th, so we stopped for the night and feasted on some tasty food and actually slept in a hotel instead of in the car in a random parking lot, as is custom for the 3-day drive. This year we have just done our routine things- work, hang out, be lazy, but with a quick trip to get some ice cream together. There's supposed to be a meteor shower tonight too, so maybe we'll try and catch a glimpse after work.

These last two years have been great. I love my husband and am so glad that I really did marry
my best friend.

Relief Society

So, this post may seem a little cheesy, but I wanted to say something about our Relief Society.

[For those of you who don't know what that is, it's basically a group of all the women in our church, and we meet every Sunday after our main worship service while the men meet in another class. There's some good info about it on Wiki that tells about it's founding, etc, if you're interested.]

I have been in the Nursery tending to the mini wardies for about 6 months now, so I was actually a little nervous to go back to Relief Society, because I only knew a few people. I wont say I'm shy because I think I got over that a long time ago, but I'm not one of those people who can just walk up to someone, introduce herself, and be instant friends with others. I generally wait to be approached instead. Plus, Nate and I tend to be a little anti-social, so I was afraid to leave my little comfort zone.

However, I quickly learned that being nervous about Relief Society was so silly of me! Yesterday and the week before were great, and I'm enjoying slowly getting to know the other girls in my ward. I'm trying to reach out more and be a little more social, because I think everyone in that room is interesting and wonderful in their own way. I enjoy everyone's comments and ideas, and look forward to learning more from everyone.

What a great organization, where we can come together as women and support and uplift each other and have that friendship. I'm grateful to the girls who do try to reach out of their own comfort zone to be welcoming and friendly, and I hope I can be that person for the next new girl in the ward.