One Year Later...

It's hard to believe that Darren and I have been married a year already. It seriously seems like just last week we were sealed for time and all eternity in the Oakland temple and then off to Arizona for his student teaching.

Here are some pictures and statistics from our first year of marriage:

Our wedding day

Honeymoon - Monterey, CA

Christmas in Virginia

Giants Spring Training practice - Scottsdale, AZ

Giants game - Peoria, AZ

Giants v. Dodgers - Camelback Ranch, AZ

Mesa Arizona Temple

San Francisco, CA

Snowbird, UT

San Francisco, CA

Stats:

    4 moves 
    3 apartments 
    2 trips
    3 Giants' games
    1 infestation of bed bugs
    ?? car problems and overheatings
    1 broken car handle
    2 weeks apart
    4 jobs between the two of us
    5 church callings
    2 major food holidays by ourselves
    No Spring or Fall
    12 unforgettable months

I feel so lucky to be married to such an amazing man, and look forward to the years to come!

Happy Anniversary Darren! I love you!

Happy Birthday Darren!

Darren turns 27 today. He will claim he's an old man, but he's still pretty young in my book!

In honor of his special day, I gathered some of my favorite photos that display his personality to the fullest:

Oh, I love this boy.

And, just so you know that he can actually take a normal picture, here are some others:

Happy Birthday babe! I sure do love you.

Anniversary, Part 1

Our one-year anniversary isn't until the 19th (seriously, how quickly has this year gone by?!) but we are leaving Thursday (which is also Darren's birthday) for California and wanted to do our gift to eachother, a little dinner and dig into the top tier of our wedding cake instead of trying to take everything with us and do it at Darren's parents' house.

When we got up yesterday morning Darren couldn't wait to open our present (since our anniversary and Christmas are so close we just got one big gift to cover both occasions). We actually bought it about 6 weeks ago (before Darren's Walmart discount card was deactivated), wrapped it, and kept it in the hall closet until last night.

Darren and our new television

He quickly set it up and looked like a kid on Christmas morning with his new toy.

For dinner we made little pigs 'n blankets, which may sound weird, but we had them at our reception and didn't get to have any since we were busy greeting everyone. They were so good! We definitely "pigged" out.

After watching some football (Darren was in heaven. He could actually see the score at the top of the screen) we cut into our cake and were pleasantly surprised! It was really good! The frosting peeled off pretty easily, but the marble cake and raspberry filling was quite delish. Quite amazing how freezing something for a year won't destroy it!

We finished off our evening by watching Eclipse. We got it from Redbox Saturday night and waited to watch it on the big tv. It was a fun night together, and I'm excited to celebrate our actual anniversary on Sunday!

The Love of Baking

So, this week has been extremely slow for subbing. I haven't had any calls, but do have a job set up for Friday, so I've been trying to find things to keep myself busy.

This past weekend I got everything I needed to make Cranberry bread, so I did that Monday.

Yesterday was even worse and I wanted to do something Christmasy. The closer I get to Christmas I realize all the things that I won't have, that are staples at my parents' house at Christmas. A few of those things are different types of cookies, movies, etc. So, I went to my cookbook to figure out what I could make. The only thing I had all the ingredients for was sugar cookies. And not even the recipe I grew up with. I had to go to my Better Homes & Gardens book.

They turned out great though! I kinda had to improvise with the icing and use a recipe that went with a different cookie dough, but it worked.

I ended up with almost 4 dozen sugar cookies, but it gave me something to do and a surprise for Darren when he got home from work!

Simple Pleasures

This weekend we took to our kitchen and re-discovered some of our most favorite things:

Darren: Home-made Almond Roca

Natalie: Home-made Cranberry Bread

Both, divine.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Besides the snow, which just screams Christmas to me, our apartment is getting all decorated as well. Well, as decorated as we can afford this year!

I could barely wait until the day after Thanksgiving to pull everything out. When we woke up on Friday we (maybe more I than we) pulled everything out of our "Holiday box" and got to work.

Our wooden nativity

The Monday before Thanksgiving we went by Walmart to pick up some things and decided to get ourselves a little Christmas tree as well! It was a spur of the moment buy, but we are so happy that we did.

Darren figured out how to assemble it all, and then we got to wrapping presents...for other people. I think there are two things under that tree that are for us.

Our Christmas tree

We also put up our advent calendar! I grew up with one identical to this, and made one for myself a few years ago. I also insisted that we have a candy kiss ribbon, just like I grew up with. I went from Walmart to Michales to Hancock Fabrics and then back to Michaels before I had everything I needed, but I'm SO happy with the end result. We take a kiss off every day until we get to the silver one, which means it's Christmas!

Advent calendar corner

We also had to have stockings! My grandmother knitted Darren one last year, to go with the one that I grew up with, but we decided to leave those at my parents' house since we'll be going there for at least a few more years, so we got some from Walmart. I love our stocking holders too. I got one from my brother for Christmas last year, and we found an identical one for Darren so we had to get it :)

I love our little decorations, and it makes everything feel so festive. We still have one more project to do, but that will wait until Family Night on Monday. (I'll post pictures later!)

We are getting more and more excited for our trip to California for Christmas! Only 13 days 'til we leave!

Turkey Day!!

We had a great Thanksgiving! I was SO nervous about making such a huge/important meal, but it went well.

We got up, got ready, and then got to work. I made about half of our food the day before, so we didn't have much to get ready on Thanksgiving. We turned the parade on and I started getting our turkey ready. As you may be able to tell, I was less than thrilled to stick my hands in the bird and pull everything out.

With the lovely neck

Afer rinsing him out and getting ready to dry him off

While Mr. Turkey was cooking, I got to work on our green bean casserole, gravy and stuffing. I underestimated how long each of those would take and everything was ready before the turkey was! Whoops.

When he decided to be done, he sure looked good!

Mr. Turkey

Darren took over carving duties, and had fun doing it ;)

We were excited to use our "good" dishes that Mom and Dad Capell gave us for Christmas last year, as well as some incredible silverware from Darren's aunt and uncle. It was fun to be a little fancy!

Our spread

After we ate to our heart's content Darren set out to find the wishbone. It took us a while, but we finally found it and cleaned it off, just so we could break it in two.

Darren and our wishbone

Much to Darren's dismay, I came off conqueror. Muah ha ha.

With my trophy

We took a break for a while, changed into sweats (jeans have no give!) and watched football until we had more room for pie.

Since there were only two of us we decided to make only one pie, and since I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin (I'll eat it, but it's not my first choice) we made a French Chocolate Silk. And let me tell you, it turned out fantastic! I just love stuffing my face with chocolate. Truth be told, there were a number of tears shed for this pie. You are actually looking at attempt #2, after #1 didn't set due to liquidy butter. #2 has a broken crust, but I sucked it up and used it. Darren had no idea Thanksgiving was going to cause so much drama.

Our delish pie

We wish we could have spent Thanksgiving with family, but we were grateful to be somewhere we could spend it together. My dad called me on Friday to let me know that my grandparents (who we were supposed to visit) had gotten 5 inches of snow on Thanksgiving, and were going to be getting more that day. They told him that we made the right decision to stay in Idaho Falls. If we had gotten up there, we probably would not have been able to get out safely until Sunday or Monday.

We are grateful for so many things, but mostly our families and Darren's job that provides for us each day. We are excited to see Darren's family in just two weeks, but will miss spending Christmas with my family. 'Til next year!

All Snowed In

This is what we came home to Saturday about 11:30am. We left about 10:30 and it was raining. Guess things change quick here!

This was Sunday night from our patio:

Yesterday morning. And look at that lovely snow-covered California car. Poor Corolla...

So, we were supposed to leave yesterday morning for Northern Idaho to spend Thanksgiving with my dad's parents. Due to the weather we decided to wait a day or so, so we found some things to keep us busy in the house!

Check out our jars! Haha. At our ward's Super Saturday a few weeks ago we made the "Date Night"ones, but I took a set of the FHE strips to have for us as well. We'll have an FHE idea and a date idea for every week next year :)

We also finished a Christmas craft I've had the supplies for but hadn't gotten done yet.

We have a Christmas wreath now! I was so excited to get it put together and I like how it turned out. A big thanks to Darren for helping me. I didn't quite have enough hands to get it done myself!

So, back to this snow thing. We're currently under a BLIZZARD warning until 11pm tonight. It's not supposed to stop snowing until sometime tomorrow morning, so we've had to call off our trip to my grandparents. We were dissapointed, but felt much safer staying home. We'll have my brother and his wife down from Rexburg on Thursday, and hopefully things will be ok by then. (They just announced that I-15 is closed from Idaho Falls into Montana, so looks like we made a good choice!)

Anyways, maybe I'm crazy, but I'm excited to do Thanksgiving here! It was fun to go out last night with Darren and get a turkey and all the fixings for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. My mom emailed me a Thanksgiving story from the Friend that we used to read every year. I remember just laughing and laughing with my brothers and sisters when we would read it. If you've got young ones they might enjoy it! Go here to find it.

I hope you all enjoy your holiday and you'll hear from us again soon!!

Our Apartment!

After much waiting, here is our lovely abode! We got unpacked SO much faster than we did in Turlock. Well, to be quite honest, we weren't even unpacked when we had to pack up again. I can honestly say we are completely settled in here in Idaho. I love our apartment and loved putting everything together. I can't wait to get it all decked out for Christmas later this week!!

Our bedroom (We have a BED now!!)

More of our bedroom

View from our entry way

Our living room

More living room

Again, the living room, and our front door. Guess I can't get enough of it!

Our kitchen. When we have bar stools, I will love it even more!

More kitchen. And some Darren.

Our dining area. We have chairs for our table!

We are loving Idaho, but wish we were closer to all of you. We are so excited to see Darren's family again in just a few short weeks!!