happy love day to my love

Casey Mcfarland Photography

"pure love is an incomparable, potent power for good."
-Elder Richard G. Scott

thank you for teaching me how to be good every day, scotty. i love you!

a post about everything

hi! january is over half done and i just can't believe it. christmas and new years were so so fun. it was just so great to celebrate our first christmas together. i love surprises and i forgot about basically everything that i had asked for so being on the receiving end was good as ever, and i surprised scott with a couple little gifts so i was glad i got away with that (because he went and bought himself a CANOE for an early christmas present which, for the record, i am a strictly "MUST wait until christmas day for presents" kind of person, but apparently i can't win every battle). i also got to see mike and juli which was nice because i haven't seen them since our wedding, and even then you don't really SEE them, you know?? mike and juli we are coming to visit you guys before you kiss DC goodbye! i swear it!

for our wedding we got this little date jar with various gift cards to places around town for when we're poor and want to do something fun (all the time). anyway, i had scott check to see if any expired at the end of the year, and the only one that did was passes to the hot springs sooo that is what we did for new years. we didn't even end up using them because someone we knew had rented out the place and just gave us passes, i don't really know how it worked actually. when someone gives you free passes to something you don't ask questions. but it was fun. there was a waterslide, and i'm not sure at which point adults decide they're too old to go down waterslides? maybe it's when you have kids or something because my mom never did that kind of stuff at pools, but i just haven't reached that point yet. maybe it's just that i'm immature. that's probably it.

school has started back up and we are BOTH in school this semester and to be honest i was really interested to see how that would pan out with us seeing less of each other but it really has not been bad. in fact, i think scott seems to have way more energy which i just love. crossing my fingers that lasts through may. i am in my last semester and have been getting frequent waves of nostalgia about it. i am so excited to put a stamp of completion on my undergrad but guaranteed i'll probably bawl saying goodbye to all the girls in the dietetics program when the day comes. i mean we have been THROUGH IT. and you just can't replace the bonds you make going through a program like this together. these last two years of my undergrad have been chaotic in the best kind of way so yeah, i'm going to miss that. i'll save the rest of that sap for another time. for now i will drink and be merry for tomorrow we die (graduate)!

in other news i chopped my hair again and (for now) am a convert to the short hair. who knew? also (sound the trumpets) i have officially been accepted as an intern for the USU dietetic distance internship and will be completing my rotations in minnesota upon graduation! lets all breathe a MASSIVE sigh of relief on that one. scott and i are so excited to get out there and i am itching to get started on rotations. i haven't determined my official start date but i am hoping its asap as possible.

this post is getting lengthy. once i start writing i get so excited and there's so many things that i want to talk about! i guess i'll just have to start blogging more ;)
merry christmas, happy new year, happy mlk weekend people, go do something fun! i'm gonna eat cake. yum.

this is the only picture i have of us on christmas and it wasn't even christmas it was christmas eve. mildly disappointed about that

 and you guys my niece is seriously the CUTEST. i mean, just don't even get me started.

 i've been super good this semester about getting up for my morning workouts and getting to see the sunrise every morning is serious payoff. love it!

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.