Christmas in Idaho

Darrin and I spent Christmas in Idaho this year, with my family. I hadn't been home for a while, so it was nice to see everyone there and to feel the comfort of my old home (which doesn't quite feel like home anymore). My sisters were both there with their kids so that was fun. I love seeing my nieces and nephews and seeing how much they change between the times that I get to see them. I was a complete dumb dumb and forgot my camera, so I don't have any pictures of the cute kids, but you'll just have to take my word for it...

Lincoln, my sister Mindy's little boy is now almost 6 months old. His eyes are always opened wide and he looks surprised as Mindy's in-laws say. He is a very good baby.

My nieces, Hannah and Hailey are cute as ever as well as full of energy. It is tiring to be around them for a long time because of how much energy they have-I don't know how Angela does it, she's a great mom!

Little Matthew is so cute too! He is always happy and full of energy, just like his sisters. He was into everything, including my chocolate bar that he managed to unwrap and get a bite out of before my mom caught him.

Well, the pictures I did get were after Christmas. For Christmas, Darrin got me oil pastels. I have never used them and he thought that they would be a good thing to learn together. He is so sweet. They turned out to be a great thing to do together. We did them the day we got back to Provo and here are the results:

Here are the oil pastels with the sketch book he got me (he got two, one for me and one for him!)

My first attempt at using the pastels, not bad for the first time. I think I'll really love this new hobby of mine.

Here is Darrin's first page of using the pastels. He has never taken any art classes and I was amazed by how much natural talent he has.

Our first Christmas as a married couple was wonderful, even though I forgot the camera to capture any of the actual day...oops!

Ely, Halloween, & Christmas!

Although when just thinking about the past couple of months I don't feel like that much has happened, a lot more happens in our lives than I realize. I will start with a while ago and work my way to today!!!

Darrin's grandmother passed away in October. She was 93 years old! We traveled to Ely, Nevada, where Darrin's mom was raised to go to the funeral. I guess it wasn't too unexpected, but it was still a sad funeral. It was especially hard for me to see Darrin's grandpa and how he was dealing with his wife being gone. I don't think it would have been as sad if I weren't married now... just thinking about that makes me so sad!

Below is our niece, Maia, on the car ride to Ely. We rode with Darrin's sister there. She is such a happy girl!

We also went to a favorite of the Bronson family--Garnet Hill. It was pretty cool. All you have to do is watch the ground as you walk around and you see sparkling red--you guessed it, garnets! Here is Darrin standing on the hill, and below I am holding a small handful of the garnets we found in less than an hour of looking.

Halloween Time! For Halloween, Darrin and I got a giant pumpkin. It was so big the grocery store scale couldn't measure it, so we were given the 30 pound price :)

Darrin is doing part of the dirty part-digging out the guts!

I was in charge of the mouth and Darrin did the eyes. Together, it was a masterpiece! I loved how my teeth turned out and Darrin created perfect eyes to compliment them!

More guts!

Here he is, all lit up. On the back we did the Chinese symbol for dragon backwards so that it would reflect behind the pumpkin. It worked...sort of :) but it looked great all the same.

Our Halloween decorations. Ghosts hung in our window and our giant pumpkin (looking not so giant in the picture) next to the door.

Today, we picked up a Christmas tree at Home Depot. I was so happy! It was a really good price, especially for a real one. It is so cute and fits our apartment perfectly. My goal is to keep it alive for next Christmas too!

All cutely decorated with silver and blue, plus my ornament from Kendra that she brought me from Jerusalem. I think it looks great!

While we were at Home Depot we picked up some sandpaper and paint and sanded and painted our little end table. We had gotten it for free from our last apartment complex but it needed a little tlc. It is outside drying right now and I'm excited to have another good piece of furniture!

One last exciting bit is that Laura, Darrin's sister, had her baby! She was beautiful and Laura was so tough, giving birth naturally. Her name is Lillian and we are so excited to have her here. Welcome to our family, baby Lily!

just my luck...

I really like the blog that is on the side bar of my blog called How About Orange.  They have free fun things like templates for thank you notes or notepads and stuff like that.  Along with that is a giveaway every once in a while.  And wouldn't you know it... I won! I had never entered in any of the giveaways before because I figured I would never win, but I just decided to for some reason on this one.  Here is a picture of what I won:

Cute, eh? Maybe it's a way of giving back to me for the not so wonderful weeks I have had.  I got sick a couple weeks ago and had probably the longest cold I have ever had, which I am finally over.  Also, school has been...well, not the most fun for me.  Lately, I've been longing for a job in which I can come home and not have more work to do at home.  Yesterday I came home and worked until nine grading papers and stuff.  Not to mention I have an observation by BYU and by my principal on Monday.  Life is crazy, but I guess not void of rewards :) 

a few adventures

So...I guess if you don't want to see a lot of pictures, you better stop reading now and go to a different blog.  Here are Darrin and my adventures in the past month.  I just haven't had time to post for a while. Who knew teaching would take up so much of my time?! :)

First thing...Darrin and I moved! Yay! I was pretty excited to move because this apartment is nicer and has a few things that our other apartment didn't have--mainly a dishwasher and a washer and dryer.  I LOVE them both!  Here are two of my favorite rooms of the house because they are such an upgrade from our last apartment.

The kitchen:

and the bathroom: (we got a cute new shower curtain too)

We got a cute little googly-eyed fish and named him Jared.  Then...they both died :( Hermano (the bigger fish) was our great pet for more than a year--we had him about when Darrin and I started dating.

Our next adventure is exploring some Mayan ruins (or so Darrin called them).  He saw this structure from the highway and decided that one day he would explore them, so one Sunday, on our way to Payson, we did.  

Here is Darrin before we got there--we had to hike a little ways up. (He's way excited)

Here they are close-up.  We both agreed they were a little more impressive looking from afar.

Here was my favorite piece of art that someone so thoughtfully spray painted on the ruins. Aren't they cute?

The next adventure was going to St. George for Lincoln's baby blessing (Mindy & Jesse's little boy).  Here are two cute boys sleeping in the back of the car.  How sweet!

This is sometime in St. George.  Hannah is getting so big and grown up--now in Kindergarten! This almost looks like a future family photo :)

Here's a close-up of cute little Lincoln.  He was very content sleeping.  He likes to stick his tongue out when he sleeps.

Whenever Hannah sees Darrin she always tackles him and he is a good sport about it and plays along.

And Matthew showing off his recently attained walking skills. With Hannah tackling in the background.

And those are some of our adventures in the last month.  Hope you enjoyed!

i am now officially an adult...

Wow. That is all I have to say right now.  I started teaching third grade yesterday and I have made it through two whole days of teaching.  After yesterday, I wasn't so sure of the career I had chosen, but I have flip-flopped since.  Today went much better.  One way I know this is because my throat doesn't hurt as much :)  I feel like I can now say that I am officially an adult because I have a real job (by that I mean the one I went to college for).  I just hope more days can be like today than they will be like yesterday.  I was so grateful to have Darrin the last week.  He knows how scared I was and helped me through all my first day jitters.

Waterbury & Boston

We got the chance to go to Connecticut on a trip with Darrin's family. Darrin's dad got married in the Boston temple. The temple was beautiful and it was such a good experience to go. We just went for three days but it was fun being around Darrin's family and meeting Melanee's family, the woman Randy married.

Here we are waiting in the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.
Darrin was pretty bored, so I decided to entertain him by
taking a few pictures :)

What can I say? He likes me...



As I'm sure you can figure out, he didn't know I was taking
a video. I thought it was pretty funny.

This is the Boston Temple. It is so pretty and the grounds
are really pretty too. There were all kinds of flowers
there. There were all kinds of trees in the East,
I had no idea! I'm just glad I didn't get a picture of my hair.
It HATED the humidity.

Here's Darrin snuggling his dad before the wedding.

The happy couple right outside the temple.

Darrin's niece, Maia. She liked my tube of
lip gloss. She might have just liked the taste of it though...

We went to this historic house, built by Josiah Bronson,
an ancestor of the Bronson family. It was built in 1738 and
most of the house is still in its original condition. It was really cool.
I just can't say that he was a good-looking guy-maybe
if he smiled.

Here's Kurtis, sitting in an antique chair in the Bronson House.

The Wedding Pictures!

Yay! The wedding pictures are here! Randy Collier did our wedding photography and he did a great job! We are excited to have them. I'll start out with some of my favorite funny ones...

Common Darrin and Rachel faces.
(Don't worry, we really are happy that we got married...)

I thought it was funny that Matthew was the only

one willing to cooperate. And he's the youngest!

Darrin and his brother, Kurtis, from Alaska

This is what I think of the guy I just married :)

And here are some of my favorite traditional ones. It was so fun to look through them and remember those moments.

I was so happy that all of these friends could make it! Angie
and Kim were my roommates, Tara, a great friend from
high school, and Audrey, my next door neighbor, who is also
the daughter of the photographer.

Here I am with my beautiful sisters. Mindy has a baby now! :)

I never thought my family would be this big outside the
temple when I got married. It makes me so happy to
see what great families Darrin and I have!

I'm so grateful for everyone that helped: Connie for the flowers, Penny for the cake, Randy for the luncheon and open house, Dad for the reception, Bernie and mom for the reception food
I'm also grateful for all of our family that was able to make it to the wedding and reception: Kurtis from Alaska, Mindy & Jesse from St. George, Jeff from Los Angeles (I'm sorry Jackie, Veronica, and David couldn't make it), Kim and Angie from Denver, Audrey and Randy from Sandy, Tara from Salt Lake, Melanee from Connecticut, Randy, Michelle, Natalie, Laura, Shane, Josh & Maia from Payson/Provo, and for Tom & Angela's family from Idaho Falls. Thanks for everything! Thanks Mom and Dad! We love you!

Our First Christmas!

Here we are on Christmas morning

I know this is really late, but I figured that I would still write about it. For our first Christmas together, Darrin and I stayed at his family's house in Payson. We went there the Sunday before Christmas and stayed there until the day after Christmas. It was so wonderful! For a while, our plans were to have me go home for a couple days over Christmas and then I would come back to Provo to be with Darrin. Then, I got the idea from my mom to surprise him by coming back on Christmas Eve, but Darrin kind of ruined the surprise :) He kept telling me that he wanted to come to Idaho with me so I ended up just telling him and we decided to spend the whole break together. What a great decision that was! We went to Idaho for New Year's (wow, I made that a pretty terrible holiday for Darrin... we played the longest game of Phase 10 EVER).

Now we are both back in school and the semester is going pretty well. It is so much better having Darrin in school with me. We get to do homework together (instead of me staying up later or waking up earlier to do it so I could spend more time with him). I am in my second semester of the teaching program and Darrin is doing his prerequisites for the accounting program while he works on his Chinese major.

This one's for you...

So...this is for all of you who told me that I should get a blog. Yes, that's you.  It might take me a while to actually get going on this, especially since we are starting on a new semester, but at least I got it going.

Here's my story...

Darrin and I met in our BYU ward, yes the typical BYU experience, but that is great because I got to meet the greatest guy ever! :) So, we dated for about 5 months and have been engaged since November 30th.  We are getting married on April 24, 2009 in the Idaho Falls temple.  I'm excited to spend eternity with such a wonderful person!  I will post pictures later!