i'm calling it, this is the most perfect december ever.

december has been behaving just beautifully this year. BEAUTIFULLY! everything that a december should be! one for the record books!

the semester ended a week ago (my last fall semester, weird!) and it already feels like ages ago. i promptly forgot everything i shoved into my brain in that last finals push and it is GLOOOORIOUS. after our last final on friday morning libby and i went to herm's for a celebratory brunch. which, by the way, is decked out for the holiday! so we were just sitting there with our huevos racheros, snowflakes hanging from the ceiling and wreaths on the walls, and it was snowing outside. i was just eating it up (literally AND figuratively, aha!) in all of its festive glory. 

last weekend scott and i went down to salt lake to see the lights on temple square, after which we drove up to my brother and sister-in-laws house and zonked out on their air mattress in about 15 minutes flat. poor brett and becky, that air mattress is becoming a permanent installment in their living room (we love you guys!!). the next day we had the henrie christmas party in which all the cousins exchanged gifts with one another which, adorable. also, i don't really know how, but these family gatherings make me both excited for kids and also so glad we don't have any yet. a time and a season :). 

between having to get my car registered and some unexpected tickets (some serious bad luck!) we weren't going to have a christmas tree this year and i was seriously mourning it because you only have one first christmas and darn it if we don't do it right! i was just entering the fifth stage of grief (acceptance) when scott came home on wednesday with an ADORABLE little 5 ft. tree and a strand of lights to save christmas! only half the tree is lit up but i am just over the moon about it. we topped it with a leftover monogram from our wedding (leftover wedding decor, the gift that keeps on giving!) and our apartment smells like pine and when my winter wonderland candle is lit, perfection (and by the way, if anyone wants to give me an endless supply of the winter wonderland candles from yankee candle for christmas, it's THE BEST). to put a cherry on top of it all, it snowed that night, nay, DUMPED a solid 8 inches and we've got MORE coming tonight and tomorrow (hopefully). how's that for serendipity??

also this week i discovered stove top popcorn, which, life changer. i was bummed about not getting an air popper for our wedding. in a moment of bravery though, i picked up some popcorn kernels to try popping them stove top, and WHY DIDN'T I TRY THIS SOONER?! for some reason it seemed really intimidating? for those that stand in the popcorn aisle at the grocery store trying to work up the courage like i have been for the last few months, DO IT. first of all, so easy. second of all, delicious. third of all, you will never have more fun staring at a pot on the stove. popcorn has become a permanent staple in my diet as of 3 days ago.

scott and i are particularly enjoying this time of year because this is when we met last year. i fell in love with beanie wearing/beardy scott and he fell in love with puffy coat/beanie wearing allie *swoon*. it is just fun to see each other now and look back on us a year ago, because what are we if not totally sentimental?

i can't call this a thanksgiving post since that's over

i'm sitting here after having made a long and color-coded to-do list of all that needs to be done in the next week or so, and i just thought, here i am. i didn't know how i was going to get here. and it was a crazy and tiresome couple of months but now i'm sitting here with one week left and everything is feasible. and i wonder how magnified this feeling is going to be next semester when i graduate. isn't it a surreal moment when your daydreams become tangible?

last week was thanksgiving, and i would like to publicly vote for every thanksgiving weekend to be the week before dead week because i don't think i've ever felt more subdued about finals as i have this semester (though, to be truthful, that may just be the senioritis talking ;)).
life is full of so many ups and downs. and in the past few weeks scott and i have had some run-of-the-mill bad luck that has made it particularly easy to fall into a mopey slump. but i sure am glad for the small beautiful moments. sometimes those are the only things that keep me afloat.

like every night after scott and i have said our prayers and settle into silence before we surrender to sleep i whisper "scott, i love you" and every night he whispers back "i love you too, allie."

or the road i drive up to campus that has the best view in town, i'm convinced. and even though it's brief, that glimpse i get, in the early morning fog, and the small bit of sunlight stretching to fill the valley, i look forward to it every day. that moment is never nearly long enough.

or sitting down to thanksgiving dinner, surrounded by my new family. love. bounty. happiness. well goll, it's just overwhelming isn't it?

pinch me.

the thursday effect

the end of the semester and Christmas vacation are so close these days, i can't even stand it. i get so excited about things that are about to happen this time of year that in my mind, the small activities that precede it aren't real. it's like thursdays for me. every thursday i get so excited that its almost friday that i forget that it's actually still only thursday, not friday. so i spend most of my thursdays pretty happy because, well, it's practically the weekend. then at  the end of the day i realize that i still have to work and go to classes the next day, which is always a little dissappointing. i wouldn't say it's an emotional roller coaster, more like those rides where you go up to the very tippy top and then it just drops (that ride is my FAVORITE). what is that ride called? reverse-rocket? that's what it's called at Lagoon anyway. so Thursdays are like an emotional reverse rocket. anyways. the bigger the event, the longer the Thursday Effect can take place. for example, next week is Thanksgiving, so i only have classes on monday and tuesday, thus, it's already Thanksgiving break. graduation is another really good example. i graduate in may, so if we factor in the Thursday Effect, you may as well just hand me my degree in December because i am DONE. i'm still trying to decide if this is a healthy perspective to have on life, but it does make thursdays better, and i think it's going to work pretty well for all of next semester. i guess i've just got a thing for anticipation.

here are some pictures completely unrelated to any of this

 a couple sundays ago i baked these sugar cookies because it was sunday and this is the BEST sugar cookie recipe out there, and because i die over a good sugar cookie. well, we don't have a mixer so i had to try mixing it with the whisk attachment on my hand blender whose only speed is "mega" which just led to flour everywhere. i just ended up mixing everything with a wooden spoon. also, my hands. long story short the cookies were a bust and we don't have powdered sugar to glaze them so they're still sitting in a bag on top of our fridge. some people came by our house the other night playing that game where you start with something small and trade up for something better (bigger and better? is that what it's called?) they came to our house with a can of beans or something, i don't know. so scott gave them a bag of the cookies. i'm pretty sure we won out in that situation.

last week scott and i threw caution to the wind (read: our budget) and went out to dinner TWO nights in a row! we've been whining about our desperate desire for Tandoori for too long now, so this was all very exciting.

and snow.

settling in

it's taken me a while but i think i'm finally starting to get my footing with things. between getting into the routine of senior year and settling into marriage, i've been spinning. and now november is here, and things are still a bit wobbly, but they're becoming more clear as the days go by. the change in routine that happened when school started and i got married happened all at once and i fought that change hard. because that whole "getting there" process, being "changed" seems to take foreeeeeeever. even if it is just a couple months. and i wouldn't consider myself "there" quite yet. but i feel a lot closer. and thats nice. the change has been good. i feel like an adult? not like the "i have a job and can pay my own bills" kind of adult, but like the "i plan meals and make my bed (most days)" kind of adult. the "i do my laundry on a regular basis" kind of adult. my magazines are perfectly staggered so that as soon as i finish one, a new one arrives, and i've become an "i read every single article from start to finish" type of adult, too. last weekend i finally took the last of my old unwanteds to the DI, and got pictures and our chalkboard hanging so now our front room doesn't look like a storage room anymore. from the perfectly staggared magazines, to the dinners on our hand-me-down sofa, to the sleepy mornings darting to turn on the heater so it's warm while we get ready in the dark, this teeny little apartment, this life, is starting to feel like ours.

donuts and target and ottomans

this weekend was the weekend Scott and i were originally going to get married before we decided that waiting to get married would be a lot less fun than being married (we were right about that one). naturally though, we had to celebrate our almost-wedding weekend in style so we went shopping.

this shopping trip has been a long time coming, though. the ratio of Scott fun days to Allie fun days was a little askew, since i'm in school right now. i've been letting all my fun days build up though, which isn't a bad idea because then you get one GIANT fun day where Scott gets to tread at my heels and hold mounds of clothes and watch me try on shoes and not even complain about it! it's a win-win for both of us ;).

while in salt lake Scott got this very strong need for a donut. this was particularly exciting for me. it's pretty common for me to find little quirks of Scott's rubbing off on me. like the other day he was showing me some hunting video on youtube (riveting stuff my friends) and i was able to name the brand of camouflage they were wearing. this is not anything i would choose to know, but it's just part of the gig i've come to find out, which i can accept. so when we are driving around salt lake and Scott DEMANDS (not an exaggeration, he was demanding it) that we find ourselves a donut shop, being the sweets connoisseur that i am, i'm not about to fight him on this. as it turns out, though, most bakeries are closed at 5 pm on a saturday, so we settled for some dunkin donuts. this was our first experience at the dunkin, and we're still wondering what all the hype is about. although, i can't say i expect much from a 5 pm donut. so props to you dunkin, for even having donuts in the early evening.

Scott did really well actually. with the whole shopping thing. he made it all the way to about 7 pm before he was "over this day". i've been told shopping with me requires some stamina. i managed to milk a small bit of energy out of him for target. where dreams go to party. plus we had a bazillion gift cards to use up from the wedding and if that doesn't give you a second wind then heck if i know what will. so we had a heyday in target saturday night.

i know we're both real adults now because our favorite purchase that night was a storage ottoman and we are THRILLED. driving home we raved about the ottoman, and we couldn't wait to tell all our friends about the ottoman! that you can STORE things in! and it was on SALE! the ottoman sits at the end of our bed and every day thus far it has been a small source of joy for us. yesterday, i told Scott, i sat on the ottoman to put my boots on! and it was a treat. this does not compare to sitting on your bed to put shoes on. nay. when you sit on your bed to put shoes on you sink in and fall back but this ottoman. this ottoman is sturdy and stable and it will never falter. we love the ottoman.

and because i'm too lazy to end this post in an organized manner. look! picture. despite the looks on our faces we were actually pleased. this was our first bite, and we had yet to critique the dunkin. we were just glad to have found it.

in which i embrace fall

so friday i decided that this weekend was going to be a fall weekend because i'm reallyreallyreally sad that winter is coming so FAST and fall is slipping through my fingertips. i've hardly been able to enjoy it because i've been busy coping with the fact that i'm going to be cold for the next 5 months (this takes some serious mental preparation people). bonus, though, we did whip out the down comforter this weekend and with it, our new duvet. so naturally bedtime is much more exciting these days.

and so the weekend was a fall one. i woke up and went to the farmers market, i drank hot chocolate, and i went hiking with karlie. karlie is one of those girls who can chatter about nearly anything, and so we chattered about nearly everything from marriage to school to jobs to life and the colors of fall left us super enlightened. does is blow anyone else's mind how GOLD the leaves get in the fall? it is unnatural and it makes me giddy.

sunday was the sunday-est of sundays complete with afternoon nap, some light internship shopping (still not sure what this internship will kill first, me or my bank account) and family dinner and football. pumpkin chocolate chip cookies were had in much abundance and i finally got to try my sister in law's famous raspberry tarts, and there was much rejoicing. treat season i could kiss your face.

happy

leading up to your wedding you get a lot of unsolicited advice from anyone who knows you about what you should do and what you should expect on your wedding day. inevitably something huge and important will go awry, don't sweat the details, have a morning wedding, have a night wedding, do not have an afternoon wedding, you're going to be so stressed out, you wont get to eat, you should definitely make sure you eat, etc etc and so on and so forth. its like you go into the day expecting it not to be perfect.

well guess what, we had an afternoon wedding, and it rocked. 

in some of ways, our wedding day was exactly what i expected it would be, kinda crazy, and kinda tired. but in a lot of ways it wasn't.

after the ceremony and the pictures and before the reception. there was a small gap of time where scott and i were at the reception center just us, kickin back and hanging out. i think i will always remember it as one of my favorite parts of the day. because beneath the flowers and the dress and the favors wasn't that the whole point of the day? me and him, best friends, starting our new life together. it was just so relaxed. it gave both of us an opportunity to really take in the day, and it set the precedent for the rest of the night. we just did us, and that is what i think made our day our own kind of perfect. 

if i could describe our wedding day in a word , it would be "happy". because that's what it was. i didn't care that our cake fell apart, it wasn't the end of the world that we didn't have any flowers for half our pictures. i ate at our luncheon and at our reception and heck i even had a second serving of dessert because gosh darn it it was my wedding and i wanted 2 brownies. 

basically everyone knew that when scott and i knelt over the alter together that day that i would just be a big emotional mess because as much as i try to deny it i am just tenderhearted crybaby, and you know what, on your wedding day that is totally justified. but as we knelt and looked at each other, and made promises to each other, i didn't cry. instead, i couldn't stop smiling. one of those big, trying to hide laughter kind of smiles. you know what i'm talking about? where you're just so happy and excited that the only appropriate display of emotion is laughter (all of this, i felt, was totally inappropriate, being in the temple and all). this is what was going through my head the whole time "how freaking cool is this?! this is so cool! im so exicted!" 

threw me for a loop, which i don't know why because that's what our whole relationship has been since the very beginning, and what it has been since, 

happy.

square one

so we've been married for a solid 5 weeks now and we've already got ourselves a freezer full of elk to show for it! i spend most of my time on campus (senior year is a gem) while scott spends most of his working and hunting. we've learned that i really like pillow talk and basically any excuse to keep scott awake for a little longer, and also that we are still terrible at waking up in the morning, even though we have someone else there to nudge us in the right direction (scott does most of the nudging). scott finally saw rebecca black's "friday" music video, thanks to me. we don't have a dinner table but we do have a dishwasher (priorities), and like any normal couple we stay up too late every night mooching off of my brother's netflix. and so. this is the foundation on which we are building our marriage; pillow talk, venison, and the office! i think we're off to a great start.