Life as of now. :)

So now that I have you all caught up on our house, Nick, and the trips we have taken, I will just do a small update post on life now and the day to day type things. :) First, Nick and I are going to be and Aunt and Uncle again! We found out the end of May that Nick's sister Amber is expecting.  Now though this is very unexpected, she seems excited about it and we are happy for her and supportive.  She is about 12 weeks along this week, and so will probably be due about Jan/Feb. Should be fun to have a new baby in the family. :) Job wise, Nick is still working as a mechanic at his dad's shop Quick Lube and I still work for my dad as well as part time as my uncle's New Balance shoe store. That dynamic is changing a little though, because on July 5 one of my dad's chair-side assistants left us and moved to California. This means that instead of being even on my days at Spurrier Orthodontics and NB, I now work full time at my dad's, which us Mon - Thurs, and then just the weekends at NB. I will still be as busy as ever, lol, but I am excited to finally be full time at my dad's after graduating from college in 2010, which is was I have wanted. Though I do like NB too, which is why I am staying weekends there for now.
  So, now that we have our house pretty much finished, we are having fun finding things to fill it. We finally got couches for the upstairs entertainment room, that we could actually fit up our low, tight stairway. We sadly do not have a new bedroom set like we thought, because the beautiful one that Nick found for us on KSL, is to tall to fit up our stairs, so we have to continue using my old one for now and continue looking. His brother really loves the bedroom set we bought though, so we are going to sell it to him, which works out since we can't use it. We had a TV as well for the downstairs, but the brightness was fading in and out, so we had to take it back and are going to find a new one, we just didn't have time before the Cali trip. It is so much fun watching our house come together. :)
 That is pretty much our life right now, just work and our house. We are pretty busy, but we do try to make time for friends as well. We have a real great group of friends that we love hanging out with, and its even more fun now because we are all married now. ;D On May 10, Nick and I have been married for 1 1/2 years and I can't believe we are so close to 2 years now! Time has flown and I am loving every minute of it! I can't wait to see where the next year and a half take us! It has been a wonderful adventure. : )

~Vacations~

Alright, so next, I would like to update you on the different big and small vacations I have been on in the last 6 months.
 So in Feb, Nick and I did a little mini vaca for 4 days to Jackson Hole to just get away and relax. It was fun because my sister and her friend went up at the same time, so one day we hung out with them, making dinner together and doing the Elk Sleigh ride. It was a fun little get away and we had a really good time. In March, the 14-17, I went on a little girls trip with my mom and sister for her spring break to San Fransisco. It did end up raining pretty much the entire time, but we still had a blast. We went to Alcatraz of course, and because my grandpa was a dentist there in the 60's, we got a tour of parts that they no longer show to the public anymore, such as the dental lab. It was so amazing to see where my grandpa actually worked for a few years. So cool! :D We also visited Haight-Ashbury street which is famous for hippy stuff in the 60's and went to Ghiradelli for ice cream. Though it wasn't a super long trip, I had a blast getting to spend time with just my mom and my sister. I don't see my sis as often now that I'm married and she is in college, so it was really fun. Now, though this wasn't a trip, I do wanna mention that on March 24, I went to the Holi Festival of Color for the 2nd time, with Nick, and his mom Kathy. It was a blast! I love getting covered in all those beautiful colors and watching it all go up in a huge cloud at the same time. It it so cool, and just a really fun thing to experience.
 Lastly, but definitely not least, my family (except my dear padre, who worked) went to Cali and Disneyland July 1-8. We go every year with my mom's side of the family, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and Grandparents. It is so much fun! I like to think of it as a little family reunion we have every year, though we see them other times in the year too. lol. We left the evening of June 31 (we drove down, stopping for the night in Vegas), spent 3 1/2 awesome days going to the beach, LA (where I found and took pictures of the Charmed house!, which was a fav TV show of mine if you didn't know), and Universal studios, then spent Thurs, Fri, and Sat at Disneyland, though Fri we just did half a day at Disneyland and then went to the beach again, which was awesome. I will never ever get sick of Disneyland and had such a fun time hanging out with my family there. We all got along really well and had a really fun time with one another. It was a really nice trip. :) Sunday the 8th was pretty much driving straight home. Haha...that was quite the long drive. Wasn't terrible to me though; Nick and I rode with my mom and brothers, so there were plenty of people to talk to and watch DVDs with if you weren't the one driving. ;) The trip definitely flew by way too fast, and I am already looking forward to next year. ;D

Nick Update!

OK, so, I will now finally update everyone on my dear hubby and the shoulder surgery he had to have Jan 27. For background, Nick's left should got hurt somehow at a time he's not even sure on, and as a result, it would pop out of socket at certain angles, which was especially difficult working as a mechanic. It got to the point it was popping out while he was a sleep and relaxed and so once we had insurance for him, we decided it was time for surgery and since winter makes work a little slower for him, we decided then was a good time to do it.
  The surgery he had was a lot like the rotator-cuff surgery a lot of people had to have, but slightly different, though i forget exactly what they did and the name. They did have to shave off bone shards and pull up ligaments and reattach them where they should be to help hold everything where it should be. Recover has been slow and while Nick can move his arm up over his head almost like normal again, his outward motion is like 30% and barely improving as he sees the physical therapist. It does seem to be uber slowly improving, so the surgeon is having him stick with therapy, but because the muscles are do tight, they worry it could be massive scare tissue, which if it is, and it doesn't get better, he may possibly need a 2nd surgery, which would suck. Since there has still been slow improvement they are hoping therapy will do it, but it is always a tiny possibly surgery may be needed again if it stays so tight. So i guess we shall see. Hopefully we don't need it, but we will cross that bridge if we come to it.

6 months gone again!

So here we are again everyone, me being a giant slacker and letting 6 months go by without blogging at all! I even had a few times i was going to, and then i either got side tracked or couldn't remember my password. lol. So now here i stand again, with the task of composing what i know will end up being multiple posts to catch you up on all that has been going on. For this post, i will talk about our house renovations, since the last thing i posted 6 months ago was about the carpet.

 So beginning of Feb, once our carpet was all ready for us, we picked it up and had it ready and in our garage. They had cut it as one giant roll and seriously it was like 12 feet of carpet! So freaking huge! Then, once we had the carpet, it ended up sitting for quite a few months, because it went from being simply new carpet, to more and more renovations being added in that were easier to do while we had no nice carpet to worry about. They totally are worth it and the house looks great, but a few times i definitely wanted to kill Nick. Haha... The first thing that was added, was we decided to redo all our walls and paint them. We lightly muded them to give them some texture, then painted them a desert sandish brown with a few accent walls  upstairs and down of a darker brown that has a hint of green in it. Painted the ceilings a brighter white as well. We then re-tiled the front entry way to match the kitchen and redid the fireplace with a faux marble, which is a dark grey with veins of white and a reddish color in it.

  We also then redid the upstairs baseboard to match the main floor, which we had redone before we rented out the house for a year. Haha it just kept spreading with tings that needed or could be changed before we got to the carpet. Of course, the people who did some of the work were not always 100% on time or able to come when they said, so that delayed things as well. Finally though, after what felt like forever of living in dust and on plywood, we finally got our carpet done the first week of June! Woo-hoo! House done and finally my house again! The house definitely looks so much better then before, but i am so glad to be done. lol ;)

Carpet

On Thurs, Jan 12, Nick and I were finally able to have someone come up and measure our house for the new carpet! Yay! Christmas is a very busy time so they were pretty booked then, so we had told them that we were ok with waiting til the New Year because we were pretty bust ourselves. This ended up working perfectly because Nick had the day off and I didnt have work until 1pm. He came at 9.30, so it worked out great. We are so glad we got that done and now he just had to total up the measurements to ginve us price. The carpet we have now is so old and ugly, that I cannot wait til we get our new carpet. It is really going to improve the look of our house and make it even more a home. So excited!! Haha Nick and I work so much though that getting another day off for the carpet to be installed could be a challenge. lol. Hopefully we get some advance notice so we can plan ahead. Im sure we can make it work though, since its a guy from my family's ward who is doing it and he is super nice. So ya, thats my latest excitment for now. Haha you can totally tell you are married when getting new carpet excites you. lol ; D

New Years!!

Holy cow! I can't believe that it is already 2012! This past year just flew by! For New Years we were pretty low key because Nick wasn't feeling to well. We ended up at his parents house, playing card games with his parents and his brother Terry and his family. It was fun and really nice. Righ before midnight we then turned on the tv and watched the ball drop in New York, which was really cool. It was fun.                                                          On Jan. 5 Nick and I went and saw th musica South Pacific with my parents, which was a nice. We had a good time hanging out with them. Before the show we met up at Red Robin for dinner. I had such a delicious soup and salad combo. So yum my!! I think Im addicted now. lol. On Jan. 7 my sister Alli turned 19. She had tons of friend plans though so Nick and I went and saw the new Mission Impossible movie with my parents, which was really fun and I really liked the movie too. On Sun, Nick and I went down to my parents for a birthday dinner for my sister. After we played a really fun new card game called (I think) Sorry Revenge. We had a totally blast playing it and I actually won 3 times! lol It has been a pretty fun start to the new year. Plus soon, Nick and I hope to get our new carpet, which will be so nice to have. : ) TTYL Everyone! : )

Christmas!

Alright, time for a post on how Christmas went for Nick and I. :) I'll also include Christmas eve, because we had fun activities then as well.

Our U of U Gingerbread house

  On Christmas Eve, I worked until 4.30 at NB, while Nick had the day off, waiting at the house for an awesome surprise gift from his parents that i didn't find out about til later that night. After I got off work, we met up at my parent's house for a Christmas eve dinner with my family.  It was really nice. We were early so we helped prepare it. We had chicken rolls and they were so yummy! Then after we played a few rounds if charades and each opened one gift, which is a family tradition. After that Nick and I headed up to his parents house, where we made ginger bread houses with his family. It was a lot of fun seeing how everyone turned out. Haha part of Nick and I's roof slide part way off but did stay in the end. Looked nice and red neck. ;) we put U of U's on the roof to make it our own. It was awesome! Nick and I then went home and jingled to bed, which is another fun Christmas tradition my family started. lol.     

  On Christmas day we had to be to Nick's parent's by 9, so I got up around 7 because i wanted to shower and be all ready so that we could just hang out at his parents once there until we needed to head to my grandpa's at 2.  I was glad I got up early too, because Tiff and Stephan ended up coming over at 8.20 to wake us up (which they did Nick) because Kylie and Brayden (our niece and nephew) had woken up way early and were antsy to open gifts. So we quickly finished getting ready and got over there by 8.35. Since Nick and I got a huge gift from his parent's, we pretty much just hung out and watched everyone open their gifts. The awesome gift Nick's parent's got us was.... A New Washer and Dryer!!

We were so excited because since we moved into our house, we have been doing our laundry down at my parent's house. It was fun getting to hang out with my mom while i did it, but it will be nice to not have to cart it down there anymore and then back home when Im done. Doing it at home whenever i want, rather then on certain days when i have time, will be so great! I also got a B&N gift card from my brother in law Stephan, who drew my name when we drew family members. Nick got an awesome Cabellas gift card from Terry. His parent's also bought every married couple a turkey cooker too, which was so nice of them and a total surprise. After we opened gifts we had breakfast, which is Eggs Benedict, hash browns, and Orange Julius. It was so good! 

  We had a really fun time and hung out there until 1, when we then had to head out to make it to my grandpa Spurrier's at 2. We took our gingerbread house with us because it was being judged by my grandpa in a contest. There we always have lots of pie with ice cream.  So yummy! once everyone was there we judged the houses first. Nick and I won best effort, haha...because ours looked to dilabitated. ;) We won a funny looking little toy called Weewee the pee pee (or something like that). When you pull down its pants, it will squirt out water and pee on people. So random. haha.....  We then opened gifts, going by family, with my grandpa giving riddles as to where the gifts were hidden. From him, Nick and I got a silverware set, which we really needed, as well as a really nice electric can opener. Haha that will be much nice then the manual one we have been using. ;) Then from my cousin and his wife, who had us for the cousin gifts, we got a measuring cup and the Jim Carrey Grinch movie. After everyone had opened their gifts, we all ate pie and ice cream and just hung out.
   Around 4.30 we left to head for my Grandpa Petersen's house, since they had a dinner starting at 5. It was really fun getting to see everyone and to talk and hang out. It was a great dinner and we stayed til close to 8. My grandparent's gave all the older kids and couples a cute card and money, which was nice. After my grandparent's, we went to my parent's to open the gifts that they had for us. They had already given us a fridge and were helping us get new carpet for our house, so these gifts were small fun gifts, as well as sibling gifts.  We had a lot of fun opening them and hanging out with my parents. (My siblings had gone to my aunt Chrissy's house to spend time with my cousin Dillon before he left on his mission.) It was a really nice Christmas. I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas as well! :D