Bests of 2014

We haven't ever sent out any Christmas cards since it's just us in our little family, but we still love to look back on all the things that happened each year. As cliché as it sounds, it seems like every year just continues to get better and better than the last, which sometimes I don't even know how that is possible. Along with the good, each year also brings new trials and situations but they are always much easier to tackle when you have your best friend as your husband to lean on.

 

As we look back on 2014, there were so many good things that happened to us but also some hard, really hard. I think it's important for us to look at how we overcame the hard things in life. Obviously our hardship this year was all the traveling Andrew did. We had to make the sacrifice early on so that it would make a difference in his career and our future life. We only got to spend the weekends together which made us really have to cherish that time together. But when we think about the hard things in life, it seems like there is way more good that totally outweighs the hard! In no particular order our top 5 bests of 2014 included:

 

*Celebrating our 3-year anniversary in the beautiful Bali. Never would have thought we would have been lucky enough to travel somewhere so awesome this early into our marriage but that was one perk from Andrew traveling. We hardly had to pay anything for that trip.

 

*Living in and selling our 1st house in Utah. Even though we loved that house and didn't really want to get rid of it, we were so lucky to have sold our house so easily on KSL right when we needed to without any hassles and without having to pay any realtor fees. The lady who bought our house called me to ask if she could come look at it, looked around for 10 minutes, and then put an offer on the house!

 

*Andrew continued to excel in his career (no surprise there)! He managed to travel every single week sometimes taking the red eye flight on Sunday nights and other times leaving at 4 AM on Mondays. Don't know how he did it every week without being a zombie on Monday's, he's pretty amazing. He started the year traveling to Massachusetts, then Maine, then Florida, Chicago, and also Detroit. Everyone wanted him to help out with all the clients! He's so good at what he does!

 

Because he was working in Florida for so long I was able to visit him while he was there which was also really fun. 

*I finished my 3rd year teaching. My first graders definitely taught me a lot about patience :) (especially at the beginning of the year when they were so little) but it was a great year, mostly because I was still able to teach with my good friend Caitlin. After thinking though, I decided to stop teaching and continue on with my education to pursue nursing. I took 3 prereqs in the fall and started applying to nursing schools.

 

After our annual 5k! Definitely going to miss doing that with the kids.

*It's hard to sum a year of great things into just a few bullet points, but our health has been a huge blessing. We would never have been able to do all the things we do on a daily basis if we weren't as healthy as we are. Neither of us ever really get sick (knocking on wood right now) besides minor sickness like colds every once in awhile. Because we are both so healthy and active it allows us to do so many fun things. Can't even count how many weekends we spent going golfing, hiking, bike riding, walks with Bryant, skiing, running, lifting weights, going shooting, playing lacrosse, etc. Our weekend activities, as uneventful as they might have seemed, were some of my favorite memories from the year because it was time spent with each other and what we looked forward to every single week. 

We are so blessed for this life we live! Excited to see what this next year will be like for us. Moving, school, work, travel. 

Christmas

This was the first time in awhile that my whole family was together for the holidays! It was so fun to be able to be with everyone at the same time.

Before Christmas all of us went snowboarding up at Copper. We wanted to get there right when it opened to be able to spend a full day on the mountain. So we left at 6:45 in the morning to get there around 9:00. Unfortunately luck didn't go our way.... It was snowing a ton and they also closed the tunnel for hazardous materials to go through and we were stuck in traffic for literally hours. It sucked. We didn't end up getting on the mountain until 12:45!! It was FREEZING that day too, sooo windy! Luckily because of the cold most people had already gone home which was nice so we didn't have to wait in line at all. Even though it was freezing, we all had a blast and made the most of it. 

 

My poor face was so cold from the wind that I had to take off one of my long sleeved shirts and wrap it around my face in the middle of the day.

My dad bought my mom a puppy for Christmas! He is such a cute little pup so we all had fun playing and cuddling with him, except Bryant. He wasn't so fond of him to start out. It's slowly getting better the bigger he gets but he still doesn't really want anything to do with him.



making some progress the 1st night...



 

Poor Bry just tolerates pretty much everything Cooper does to him!

The rest of the break was spent playing lots and lots of Rook with my grandparents, gifting and receiving great presents, going to movies, boys playing basketball, eating too much good food, working out, watching new shows, and some much needed relaxing. I'm so glad Andrew was able to take off a full 2 1/2 weeks from work. It's always so hard for us to have him go back to traveling after we get such a long break together. Only a few more months of traveling before he starts working from home!!! :) 

Christmas Day with my loves



Aunt Kristen and Uncle Andrew for the win with this present! He loves Mickey Mouse and this microphone sings all 3 of the popular Mickey songs. He was dancing and loving it!

Soooo spoiled by Andrew!! He always gets me the best gifts that I wouldn't buy myself. Another fun fact about Andrew is that he is the worst at holding on to presents until the day of celebration!! He can never wait. So we were at Best Buy looking at TVs and Andrew disappeared for like 10 min but I just kept browsing around not thinking anything of it. Later that night we were driving and he was like do you want to see one of your Christmas presents?! Haha so of course I said sure. And he kept saying no no nevermind I can't! So I just said okay and he was like ok ok you can see it! So he pulled it out from under his seat where he was hiding it. Too funny. So I got my headphones early but I wasn't complaining. They are so much better working out than the Apple headphones that come with the iphone. They also never fall out while running.

We must have been too busy opening presents to have taken any pictures during Christmas presents! This is the only picture I took of Andrew. Andrew's dad got him these copper mugs he wanted and he loves them. Apparently drinks taste better in them than in a normal glass ;)

It was a great holiday spent with family that seemed to go way too fast like usual.

Life Lately//Fall & Winter

So to catch up, I'm going back to school! It was a tough decision for me if I really wanted to or not, but I decided it'd be for the best so I chose to go to nursing school. I loved loved loved teaching, but I HATED working so many hours after work and on the weekends. If you are a teacher, I know you understand me. Work is never done and you always have so much to do! I want a job now where I can go to work and when I leave I am completely done and can be with my family, which is why I am switching to nursing. This fall I took my 3 science pre reqs online because I didn't know if we'd be moving during the semester. It feels weird to be back in school but I love learning new things so I am excited. Thankfully Andrew is happy to support me while I'm in school and not contributing financially anymore! He even is willing to work from home/travel just a little bit so I can go to a school that I can complete the fastest. Side note: We feel so blessed that Andrew will even be able to do this. Remember when we were going to move to Detroit in January?! Well he got a great job offer from a different company that we really were torn with what to do in terms of taking it, but he ended up talking to his current boss and seeing what the other options were besides moving to Detroit. Andrew will be switching roles in his current company in January to be the manager of the BSO team in India so he can work from home and travel to India once a quarter. So very grateful for how well he is excelling in his career. I honestly couldn't be more proud of him!

Our plans have changed quite a bit already so I wouldn't be surprised if they did again, but right now it looks like we might end up in Myrtle Beach, SC so I can complete a nursing program there. But we'll see! 

In October I played mom of two boys for a week while their parents went to Peru with their other three kids! I was a little scared after trying to feed the 1 1/2 year old lunch the first day after his parents left and he wouldn't eat anything.... but after that he was a great eater (especially if it had ketchup haha) and we had a good week with the kids. 

 They especially played well with my sister's 3 boys so we did lots of activities together. Costco, Monkey Business, parks, etc.

And probably the best news of all from October was getting FREE COSTA VIDA for a YEAR!!!! Amazing right?! I was so sad to move from Utah to Colorado knowing I wouldn't be able to get Rio or Costa but luckily they were building a Costa Vida literally down the street from my parent's house!  SO HAPPY!!! We followed their Facebook page to know when the grand opening was and camped out that morning to be the first few guests in line. No one else even did....they most definitely missed out. I go at least 2 times a week to get my fix!

Cutest scuba diver on Halloween!

Teigan turned 6 in November. What the heck? I lived with them in Las Vegas for a summer when he was just a little baby. He is now in kindergarten and so dang cute. We got him and Ethan scooters for their birthdays and they love going on walks with me and Bry so they can scooter around. 

also loves his new skateboard

They are also the best big brothers to Ryan! It is the cutest watching them play together.

The last 2 Thanksgivings, we have gone and played a round of golf before feasting. It has been fun to do with Andrew since he loves golfing so much. I'm not very good so instead I play for money haha. I put my ball where theirs are on the green and putt. If I beat them with how many strokes it takes to get in the hole, they owe me $1 for every hole. But if they beat me they don't get any money from me, obviously :) It makes for a pretty fun game!! 

Thankful for him!!!

The weekend of Thanksgiving, Jared had his state championship football game at the Broncos Stadium. Pine Creek destroyed Longmont and took State for 2 years in a row! It was fun to be living here this fall to go to lots of Jared's football games and now we get to watch him play basketball.

I know, I am that aunt that takes way too many pictures of my nephews (and my dog). But I don't have my own kids yet so give me a break! 

The first week in December we drove to Utah to get our ski stuff out of our storage unit, go skiing at Brighton, and be at our nephew James' baby blessing.

 It was pretty warm for skiing and not crowded at all which made for a great day! Afterwards we went out to Indian food where I completely indulged in my favorite chicken tikka masala....mmmm.

Sunday was the baby blessing. Andrew and I had a few things we had to do that morning before the blessing because we were driving back to Colorado right after it. When we started driving we noticed we had a flat tire. CURSE UTAH for closing everything on Sundays!! Ughhhh we called a million auto service stores that were all closed. So hallelujah for Pep Boys in Orem for being open. We got home just in time to get ready for the blessing. 

Oh and also, we want this adorable puppy!!! It was even more adorable in person....sigh. Wouldn't he look adorable cuddling next to Bry?! We think so too!