We've moved!

In August we moved out of our first home as marrieds and headed to our new home just a few miles away.  We are very excited to have a new place to grow into, except, we already have filled it pretty much :)  I'm pretty sure we doubled our home in size.  We've moved to Midvale and are even in a ward that David spent a few of his high school years in.  It's a great ward.  We get to live in a family owned home for a bit while still in school and in Utah.  We feel very blessed and excited to have a place for awhile to call home.  Any place is good as long as I have my hubby :)...  But we've had a lot of fun getting it all ready to live in.  We painted, got new carpet, cleaned it all up, and finally brought our stuff in.  It was sad to leave our first home together, but by the end of all the cleaning and stuff, I was ready to let that apartment go.  Time to move on and upward right?  Yep.

It was fun putting together our rooms and fitting it all in how we like it.  I loved having David there to help and give input.  He did all the hard work of hanging things, building shelves and kitchen storage cabinets while I just kept giving us more work to do :)  It's finally looking how we had hoped, and here are a few pictures of our home for the next two years....

I do have to say these pictures also have our decorations up for HALLOWEEN!!!  So, the front rooms have a bit of decorations, we're loving these holiday seasons.  More to come on that for sure in the coming posts.

This is our family/living room.  You walk in through the door below or there's a side door coming from the carport to the middle of the opposite side between the family room and kitchen area...

There is a nice huge window to look out during the day or watch the snow fall... as we have hot chocolate (which we so do have daily in our yellow tea kettle!!)

So the railing below leads downstairs to the in-laws, but its boarded up and they have their own entrance.

And our TV display with all our pictures and memorabilia - awe :)  We need to get other family pictures up soon...

 HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!  These are our "ghosties"...

 And this is the view from the side door into the kitchen and below is from the kitchen to the door.

 This is the hallway from the kitchen to the bathroom on the left, our bedroom straight ahead and then the study and extra room on the right...

 Yeah, the clothes are all mine... i know...

 I spent a few days organizing one of our hall closets and whenever I feel dis-organized, now I just come look at this and smile since it just helps to see something put together right - i know weird.

 His and her desks...

I'll get one of the outside soon too...  And the 3rd bedroom but I guess I forgot.  The 3rd is mostly storage and games, music instruments, etc.  It is so nice to have a real home though!!  Much more room, and still have it totally full.  We love it.  Come visit and we'll show you around!!

Pumpkin Patch

October 16 we took Clark family pictures and then all headed to pick pumpkins from the local patch.  It was a perfect fall day, which was nice considering the week before it was rainy and the week after snowy. We had fun deciding what we'd carve with the different shaped pumpkins and finally figured out the ones we were getting.  We helped the kids and grandpa Clark too.  Fun family moments....

Grandpa Clark is waving below....

This is my sweet sister-in-law and my nephew that is 1 now - I'm so glad to have her as my new sis, she's just wonderful!!

The whole crew...

Sweets....

So we found this puzzle, and just HAD to get it.  These are some of David's favorite candies.  It was pretty tough - but nice to have a more stimulating project and fun conversation.  Whoever came to visit helped us put a bit of it together... all made with love.  1000 piece candy puzzle... now if only it were real for David, but Halloween candy will work right??

My Eagle Scout!

David's little brother Joshua got his Eagle a few weekends ago.  David and Jonathan were able to wear all of their old Scout badges, shirt, etc.  And both presented something to Josh too.  I haven't been to one of those where a scout gets his eagle... strange because my brother got his, but I think I was at college.  It was interesting for sure.  Long ceremony type with ward and family members...  It was great to see Josh get his Eagle after all of his and his parents work - and very fun to see his older brothers there supporting.  They're big examples to all their younger siblings.  Okay, so I told them their shirts were kind of silly, but honestly, I'm just so proud to have married an Eagle Scout.  And one who did so much and even more than needed - can you believe he camped every month of the year in Utah snow for all scout years!?!?  Crazy!  I know our blog is all lovey dovey but oh well, we love it :)  Here are a few pictures from the festivities....

The only good pizza...

I'm a strange American.  I don't like milk, I don't like brownies, and don't really like pizza.  Yep, I get the crazy looks of... "what?? no pizza??!?!?!?  You crazy!"  Yeah, and I do crave it every 3-4 months, just a piece or so of Hawaiian or something.  I can't really explain it except maybe it's because all pizza's that I grew up with were greasy greasy and cardboardish...

David has changed my world yet again :).  He's introduced me to REAL pizza!!  Yep, I'm here to say that everyone needs to try this.  I have no idea why we Americans haven't embraced other better, healthier pizzas out there.

Italian.  Pizza.  Yep.  It's the best.  You'll either have to go to Italy, or find one of the very few real Italian restaurants, or just believe me.  They use wood ovens to cook their thin dough with mozzarella chunks and tomato chunks.  You can add other toppings but the pizzas are more made to fold up and stuff so it gets a bit messy.  My favorite is the regular margherita pizza.  It's just so great.  You can eat your own whole pizza and you won't feel sick or fatty, etc.  It's wonderful.  So, there is this great little place in SLC called Settebellos.  It is real Italian.  David took me there on one of our first dates, and I fell in love.  Little did he know that I didn't like pizza, but this was different.  We've gone back a few times, I just keep making excuses to get us there - to show our visitors the place, to take someone for their birthday, etc etc.  One day David just suggested we go there as a date night.... so of course I couldn't say no, and we said we'd share a pizza.  But you'll notice below that once we were there, we couldn't do it.  It's just too good to share....  Anyway, if you are ever in SLC (or there's one in Vegas) we'll take you there and give you a new addiction like I have :) :)

These were from our date night on Sept 11th. :)

Work, School, Life as now

Well in January a company bought us (my work company), and then put our company up for sale...  We've been going through this for months and months - and I just have to say finally - we're done!  I've put together so many spreadsheets and reports, yay no more for awhile I hope.  Our company has been bought by an investor.  This is great for me because now our company is on our own with such a small company, well, lots smaller than before.  Our HR team has a lot of decision making abilities.  It's stressful but a great learning experience for me.  I'm involved of a lot of the changes that we'll be making and hope to make some good contributions.  Some people still drive me crazy and there are days that I don't want to be at work...haha, don't we all?  But I'm still here and hanging on.  I like knowing all that is going on in our department - the processes and ways to help employees - which is good - at the same time, I still am stretching myself all over many projects.  Even though we know our future we still have a lot of things to decide: Performance Reviews, Benefits Changes, HR database and starting to support the Europe and Asia groups and doing what I do for US for them... as well as lots of other things - payroll, intranet, terminations, new hires....  The list starts to overwhelm me.  Anyway, just a quick update about it all on my end.  When I come home I still am finding time to finish putting our new home together (I think we're about done and pictures will be coming soon!) and doing recipe and computer projects.

David is probably 10 times more busy as he has part-time work and full-time school.  He has 2 really hard classes, and a 3rd class just starting next week.  All of his classes are part of his pre-dental required classes.  He studies during all of his free hours, and I feel like he should be getting 110% from all that I see him do and help him study with.  He is taking a pre-dental class actually teaching about teeth and stuff.  It is quite fun for me to hear all about it.  I don't have tests, but I get to see our recently purchased teeth model and learn all about how teeth are formed, why my teeth are sensitive and so much more.  Maybe I should have been a dentist!  Except I hate body and blood.  So, we'll leave it to David.  He's got the DAT test this spring so we've got a lot of decisions to make with schools and such.  Fun yet hard times.  David is so great at everything.  I mean besides all the homework he's still such a big help at home and gives me so much of his time.  I sure love Sunday's though since those are my one days with just us.

Anyway just a quick update on our busy lives... I'd say it can't get any busier, but I'm sure it can.  We just keep going with the flow and enjoying it as we can.

My David is so brave!!

CAUTION: This post does mention blood and a bit of gross stuff, so if you don't want to hear about it... or see it... don't read this one....

David has had a lump on his back all year, and we didn't notice it too much until it started hurting him and rubbing against his lower ribs in his back.  Over the past few months we have noticed it just getting slightly bigger and more sensitive.  So next up, we went to the doctor.  We found out David had a tumor, fatty lump, in his back.  Yeah, kinda gross, but also cool because our doctor said he would remove it to check and make sure it was okay and get rid of the pain.

So we still had to wait a month or two to get it taken out, but over Labor Day we scheduled the appointment.  I went in with David on the Friday before at noon, so that I could be there as well as drive him home.  We weren't sure how painful it would be and for how long.  So, first off, I think everyone was more concerned with little me actually WATCHING a bloody event... but I made it through it :)  I didn't watch, but sat to where I couldn't see.  Wish I could have held David's hand, but the scalpel and tools were everywhere!!

David was great though.  I was nervous enough for him.  We got in and our doctor was pretty silly since he was headed to fly out of town for Labor Day after our appointment.  He numbed up the spot and had David on his side while he proceeded to cut open and pull out the bump.  According to David it just felt weird to feel someone pulling at your insides, but he was pretty numbed up luckily.  After it was out, took like 10 min, Doc sewed him up with a few stitches and taped it up as well.  David was turning pretty white and I could see all the red gauze all over... he was losing blood definitely.  So, we had him lie down still while our doctor told us that it wasn't just a fatty tumor as we thought.  It was actually a bunch of blood vessels clot together.  No wonder it was hurting anyway.  And the blood coming out...  It was bigger, but the doctor had to pull it out rather than "how easy the fat would pop out" is what he told us.  It has been sent to the lab and David is all clear.  It looks small but it was pretty big inside of him...

We went home, David still white, and we both took a nap for like 3 hours.  So nice for a Friday afternoon!  And it was nice too to have the whole weekend to ourselves w/out anything we had to go to :)...  David was in more pain than we thought all weekend.  Most things you do requires your back so that was tough.  Even sitting in one place was hard after awhile.  He slept on his stomach, sat w/out backs, walked slowly, couldn't lift anything, reach high, etc.  Poor guy, but he really didn't complain at all, I could tell he was in pain, but he's just not a complainer.  (unlike me totally!!)  But, we made it through with movies, ice cream, and lots of sleep for him.  The stitches came out a week later and the tissue is finally healing.

We're glad its over but at the same time, it was a fun weekend together all the time and I loved caring for my David.  First of many futures for me.  He's already taken care of me lots for my many colds, sicknesses, sore legs, feet, etc.  Finally it was my turn.  Glad you're okay David!