fall winter now.

It has been a lonnnnnnng time since I last posted.

Let's see if I can hit some highlights (based almost exclusively off of the photos found on my phone):

October 2015:
-Went back to Utah for Levi's friend's wedding and were able to stay for the weekend which included General Conference!
-my sweet grandpa passed away, but we were lucky enough to be able to go California for the weekend where I gave the eulogy which was a really difficult, but rewarding task. It was awesome to spend the weekend with so much family celebrating a man we love and admire so much.
-we watched a lottttt of the rugby world cup and the All Blacks won the whole thing! I made banana cake for Levi multiple times during the tournament because it's his favorite and now I would really love a piece of it.
-dressed up as Oreos for Halloween!

November 2015:
-It was still obnoxiously warm for November so when we hosted soccer games at work, we could actually go outside and watch them!
-Again, it was warm, so we went on a number of walks in the neighborhoods near our apartment. If any animals were sighted during said walks, Levi was sure to chase them.
-My mom sent me an awesome birthday care package filled with delicious cookies and little chocolates and I'm pretty sure we ate all the cookies in like 2 days and I'm not even a little bit upset about that.
-Went back to Provo for Thanksgiving and my birthday! We had such a fun Thanksgiving with family and we celebrated my birthday by purchasing 16 donuts and I ate four of them...for breakfast alone.

December 2015:
-My little brother came home from his mission! He had been in the Orlando, Florida area for two years and it was so awesome to have him home. He came home on the 16th and it was killing me to have to wait like 4 days before seeing him!
-Levi finished his first semester of grad school (while also working full-time, which never ceases to amaze me).
-Star Wars came out so obvi we saw it opening night because Levi is #obsessed.
-spent the Christmas break in California with my entire family! It was for sure the best Christmas break everrrrrr. I've never been more sad to leave. :( but I survived.
-made a pretty awesome music video with my family like we do every year.

January 2016:
-my candy drawer at work was repeatedly attacked by mice and I hated it.
-Levi started his second semester of grad school and decided to take 12 credits (9 credits is full-time!) while continuing to work full time and serve as Young Men's president--I swear he can do it all.
-Levi decided it was time we learn to golf, so we found 3 cheap, used clubs for me (because I'm left-handed and can't share with him) and we've been having fun at the driving range right next to our apartment complex!

February 2016:
-gas prices reached an all-time low at $1.08 here in Oklahoma and I was starting to feel as if I was stealing gas when I filled my tank for $15...
-celebrated Valentine's Day the only way we know how...donuts! And more delicious food. :) And most importantly, remember why we love each other!
-cashed in on one of theeee coolest Christmas presents from my older brother and we went to the Thunder game! It was a once in a lifetime opportunity as we had theeee best seats ever (we could hear Kevin Durant yelling at the ref) and we even splurged and got food there (yum, nachos!) We had SUCH a fun time!

March 2016:
-after much begging and pleading from Levi, I finally made cinnamon rolls for the first time on my own! I still have a lot of work to do before they are as amazing as my mom's or my sister's, but it's a start! (though I have finally mastered making rolls, so I know there is hope for me...)
-Rachel came to town!!!!!! Levi always makes fun of me for how giggly and goofy I get when I'm around Rach or any of my other college friends, but it's just that everything is soooooo funny when they're around! We had THEE best time and now I am convinced that I need all of my closest friends to figure out a way to live on the same street as me for the rest of our lives.
-Levi and I started a round of whole30 which essentially means we're not eating grains, legumes, sugar, or dairy for thirty days. We're currently on day 20 and I cannot wait to be done, but I'm at the point where I have to go all the way and there's no way I'm stopping now.

April 2016:
-paid our taxes and that was kind of the worst.
-getting close to the end of the school semester for Levi and we are SO excited! He'll take one class in the spring and then he'll have the rest of the summer off before he starts his last semester!
-life is wonderful!

That's pretty much it! Except also you should know I really want cookies and pizza right now.

it would appear that levi is in pretty much every picture these days.

So good news, Levi likes to build things. One night after FHE he wanted to go to Home Depot which is pretty much his favorite store in the world. It's like if I went to Daylight Donuts or Target or something. I mean, seriously. He loves it. He could go there every day.

Levi is also super into fixing our cars on his own. Which is actually pretty amazing. Saved us a tonnnn (and I mean a TON of money) fixing one of our cars a couple months ago. Had a super sore back after being bent over the car for 9 hours, but still. A TON of money. And we drove the car to Utah and back the week after he fixed it. Oh yeah!

Also, Levi likes to build things and so does Mitchell. Somehow Levi convinced Mitchell to buy a table saw (Mitchell says he wanted it, but I'm still a little worried that Levi may have pulled out some of his bullying tactics from his playground days to get Mitchell to buy it...) Anyway, Levi designed a guitar pedal board and that was their first project on the new table saw. It turned out pretty awesome. Since then they have also built these really cool shelves for me and Heather. They hung ours in our living room recently and I'm so obsessed with it (I'll have to post a picture of it soon!). Seriously, in just the past couple weeks, we've moved our bookshelf out to the living room, someone gave us a couch for free and we hung that shelf. It's really starting to feel like a living room now that we have more than just the 1 1/2-man couch (though we are so grateful for that little couch as well--we've been very cozy in it for the past year!). But now that we have two free couches we can actually have friends over! It's the best.

So now that the worst of the heat is upon us here in Oklahoma, the daily grilling has begun. Also, fun fact: we didn't turn on our A/C until June 4th this year. And if you live in Oklahoma, you know that is a big deal. So, our apartment would be pretty dang hot until like 10 pm, but usually in the evenings we have mutual or we go to the gym or we go to our friends' house. I will admit, I didn't love sweating like crazy in our apartment when it got up to 85 or 86 degrees, but it was probably worth it. We still set it at 78 degrees (#pennypinchers) but hey! I don't want to pay that much money for cold air! Anyway, thank you to Levi who lived without complaining as I slowly melted away without A/C. But even still, we had to buy a little grill so we wouldn't have to heat up the oven or stove or anything. It's the best.

In other news, Levi and Mitchell found a turtle (this was the day Levi was fixing the car--hence the nasty hands and old work clothes).

Also, apparently there is a chair at OU where Levi works that the queen sat in once. So apparently now Levi sits in the queen's chair. ID even K, people. It's Levi. Also, yes he wears shorts and workout socks to his professional job. #summersatuniversities

Utah-apalooza!

To go whitewater rafting on some rivers, you have to apply for a permit. Sometimes you have to enter a lottery and then only some people get a permit. Soooo, my family wanted to go rafting. So we all entered the lottery and guess who won?! This girl!! Oh yeah! The chances were crazy slim, but I worked my magic and luck was mine! So captain Stacy was in charge of the trip! Actually, what really happened was that my dad and mom and uncle and aunt basically got everything ready and I just showed up with the permit. I texted my family a picture of the permit to confirm that we really did have it in the car as we headed out on our long, long drive.

We had such a magical time on the trip except for a little hiccup at the beginning. So, the one thing that I was required to do was talk with the ranger for every little thing. He had to go over all the rules and requirements with me to ensure that we were doing everything right. So I'm going over this stuff with him and I'm like, umm, I have no idea if we have a z-line kit or 50 billion life jackets or where the first aid kit is? I was like, um, can we just wait until we have the boats all set up and then my dad can tell you if we have everything? He was like, yeah that's fine, just come and get me. Fortunately, before I convinced him to stop going over the list, I had heard a couple things. One of the things he said was that we had to have 5 extra life jackets (one for each boat). So later while they were still setting up, I casually asked my uncle how many extra life jackets we had and he said we had two. I told him what the ranger had said (not expecting it to be a big deal) and then people started to get concerned. Five extra life jackets?! We've never had to do that before! Anyway, we go talk to the ranger and he confirmed that yes, you have to have 5 extra ones and there are no exceptions and the closest place to buy new life jackets was THREE HOURS AWAY, six hours round trip. It was so sad and it was set to ruin the day and potentially the trip.

So we go back to where everyone is setting up and we explain the situation and RANDOMLY the other group that was also setting up just so happened to have tons of extra life jackets and offered to let us use them. Talk about a huge blessing! As it turns out, they had actually forgotten something that they had to have and so they had to drive the six hour round trip to get the stuff. If that hadn't happened, they would have been long gone by the time we realized our huge problem. So it was a bummer for them, but a huuuuuuuge supersized blessing for us.

We were then able to start our trip on time and had just the best time. It was so fun to spend a week with my family out on the river. And even though it was still super hot at night, it was still such a blast and so beautiful! Plus, it was Levi's first trip and homeboy looks good on the river. Please note his mega short shorts in the picture above (they're somewhat hidden by the backpack he's carrying, but they're there). Plus, he got way mega tan.

Oh, and I forgot to mention; we were able to stay with Levi's family the weekend before the trip and as luck would have it we got to Utah the day before good ol' Rachy face and her family left Utah (back to South Carolina). It was so awesome to get to hang out with her and Kenneth and her two adorrrrrrable little boys. It was awesome because little Kenny loved Levi and convinced him to play with him the whole time. Although things got slightly out of hand when Levi convinced Kenny to crawl through the cat door. Haha, but seriously I was so stoked to see Rach. You should seriously consider going through the "Rachel" tag on my blog because there are some quality gems in there...one of my favorites being this one when she thought she was doing a "polishing" service project. Literally, I die.

And then finally, the picture of breakfast. Free continental breakfasts at hotels are what I live for. Truly the best. Bagels, donuts, ham, golden. Best start to the last leg of our trip home.

And last but not least, 4th of July shenanigans. Basically we spent the whole weekend with the Walsers because that's what we do. The 3rd of July included an awesome trip to Lowe's to buy wood (this was the day they built the shelves!) and then to the Walser's house to build the shelves...or if you're me and Heather it was the time to make homemade oreos because duh. Later we grilled and then we did fireworks! Mitchell and Levi looooooove fireworks, but were so kind as to buy some sparklers and "tro-its" (I think most people call them pop-its?) for Heather and me.

Then the next day we went to a friend's house to have another BBQ and more fireworks and of course, for Levi to sit on the children's toy horse. Obvi. We ended the night by watching the town firework show from the roof!

I love America.

And that's a wrap.

no but really. what is even happening right now?

Soooo...I wrote this post two months ago but then never posted it. Why? I have no idea. But I went to blog today and I found this in my drafts. My apologies. So basically this only catches you up to about the middle of May. Also, for once in my life there might be more pictures that words. So basically you won't drown in the paragraphs on nonsense as you look for the next picture. Celebrate the little things, I guess. Pffffft.

Things that have happened during my long absence:

 

+ went home to CA for the long weekend to celebrate my sister's bridal shower and so everyone could meet her fiance and to celebrate Valentine's day and mostly to eat chocolate covered strawberries.

+ chaperoned a youth dance. Levi said if one of the kids thought I was a teenager and asked me to dance, he would take me out to ice cream. Turns out Levi is the youngster because some girl asked him to dance! What the heck? Also, we didn't get any ice cream.

+ spent fifty billion years trying to find a dress for my sister's wedding. Finally found one! 

+ went to the medieval fair here in town. Medieval-ness is wild, for sure. But I did get to eat a turkey leg and part of levi's navajo taco and we also go to launch marshmallows off of mini catapults and saw a lot of interesting outfits and also I got a sunburn.

+ had our huge work event and didn't die from it.

+ made banana bread, but I think I want to try a different recipe for it now...one that is a little more moist.

+ had Levi's little brother in town! went to some of our favorite places: KD's restaurant, a Thunder game, guitar store, raising cane's, dick's sporting goods, etc. It was super fun!

+ levi got a new guitar! many thanks to his mom and grandma for it. he seriously loves it and plays it evvvvvery day (and sometimes tries to get out of doing the dishes by sneaking off to play...)

+ storm season started and we had a couple small tornadoes and a lot of thunderstorms. we've even had to get in the storm shelter once (and we took a #shelterselfie!). also, I really hate flash flooding. maybe you've been reading about the flooding in houston right now? (...oops. like I said, I wrote this two months ago haha) stuff like that is the worst to me. levi's car got flooded one night and it was the worst. and it's really scary. turn around, don't drown!

+ went out to provo for BYU graduation! we're so proud of lauren for graduating and we're excited to see where life takes her next! also, it's always good to go to our favorite food places in provo!

+ we went straight from provo to california for my sister's wedding! It was super fun and I just love love love being with my family. It always goes by too quickly, but I'll admit: I'm glad to be done with weddings for a while haha.

+ came back to oklahoma and we've had even more storms. it's been a really wet may! I don't mind the storms just as long as I'm in the safety of my own home. but you guys, driving in it is the pits, yo. also, the sky gets such weird color during the tornado-y storms. the pic above was taken at like 10 pm and it was way more yellow-y and weird than you can see here...

+ celebrated our anniversary!! I can't believe how quickly a year has flown by! the day started with me having to go clean the church (ha!) but then I came home to find flowers and donuts and my favorite juice waiting for me in bed with my favorite guy in the world! please note levi hiding under the covers (for modesty!).  it was such a fun day of hanging out together, reminiscing on all the incredible (and some less incredible) events that have transpired over the last year. we ended the evening with dinner on the 49th floor of the tallest building in town. It was amazing! It was almost cancelled due to--surprise!--a thunderstorm, but fortunately it wasn't. In fact, we ended up having an awesome "light show" (i.e. tons of lighting) while we ate our dinner. It was awesome. (Suuuuper crappy anniversary pic...really not sure what the guy was doing but it was so blurry and dark that I had to like edit it all weird (and I have no idea how to edit btdubs) but it's the best we have haha)

+ and then just this last weekend (lies. two months ago) was really fun. We had the long weekend and on Saturday we went up to Penn Square mall to redeem my reward for winning my family's March Madness bracket (1 pound of See's Candy!). Of course, as we were ready to leave, the flash floods were starting. Because of where we were parked, the water was deeper (probs 4 or 5 inches) so we wanted to get out of there before the water got to the engine! It continued to pour rain, but we made it home safely and spent the evening in our sweats and eating the chocolate!

+ and there you have it. The last three months in a nutshell. Out.

let's! go! fly a kite!

up! to! the hiiiiiighest height!

So, be honest with me. Have you ever been able to successfully fly a kite for more than 30 seconds at a time? I mean, where in the world is it windy enough for long enough so you can fly a kite? I mean, serious questions people.

Well, I have the answer for you. Oklahoma! You know, like in the song? "Oooooklahoma where the winds come sweepin' down the plains!" Duhhhhhh, right? And that lyric is truer than true around here. It is windy all day, every day. You get used to it though. I mean, it's not always going 50 mph, but probably at least half of the time it actually is going that fast. It'll freeze your little face off if you're not careful.

*side note: a couple lines later in that Oklahoma song, it says "ev'ry night my honey lamb and I, every night, we sit alone and talk and watch a lazy hawk makin lazy circles in the sky." What the? For those of you that were curious, Levi and I have not yet had the chance to watch lazy hawks make circles in the sky. But also for those of you who were curious, I definitely refer to Levi as my honey lamb.

Okay, so anyway. Since it's always windy and this last weekend was supposed to be upwards of 70 degrees around these parts (yes, winter is hard...jokes), I thought hey! Why not go fly a kite?! Levi had to work at some graduate student orientation yada yada on Saturday, so I was put in charge of grocery shopping and other errands (let's not talk about how I had to go to Office Depot three times. I'm so tired of that store). Whilst shopping for the groceries, I was like, hey! Since I'm at Walmart I will buy some kites! (and I'm at Walmart because there are like zero regular grocery store within a 20-stoplight radius of our apartment--seriously, I already have to go through like 5 to get to Walmart and it's literally like a 1/4 mile away).

I went back to the toy section and the kind employee directed me to the only kites in the store (not many options, because it's still winter...sort of). Anyway, they had Cinderella and Barbie. Obvi I took one of each (at $1.37, the price couldn't be beat!). One for Levi, one for me. When Levi came home from work I told him I had a surprise and I showed him the kites. Originally he picked the Cinderella one but then he decided that Barbie had better hair, so he made a trade. As my friend Danielle pointed out, this probably means I should stop doing my Cinderella hairdo's and starting perfecting the Barbie wave if I want to impress this guy.

So we went to the local high school and flew our kites. I have this terrible memory of flying my older brother's homemade kite when he was in cub scouts or something and I accidentally let go of it and it got stuck in some trees and I ruined the day. I also remembering being significantly more upset about it than anyone else was (including my brother), but still. Traumatizing.

But out on the open field where the wind was a-blowin' and Cinderella's face was a-smilin', we had a grand old time. Seriously, it was so fun! There was plenty of wind to keep the kites afloat and the activity easily entertained us for an hour. Levi found some giant tower to climb on (he said it was where they film sports from?) and we also figured that we could put the handles in our pockets or attached to our shoes and they would still continue to float while we sat down and just stared at our kites haha. It was really such a great afternoon. So for all you fools that want to fly a kite, come visit us! You can choose Cinderella or Barbie.

Now pictures!

crafting with the craft-less.

Crafting easily makes it onto my list of top ten things I’m incapable of doing. Other things on said list include using a remote, surviving a haunted house without screaming and attracting every stupid zombie and ax man in there, and waiting until someone’s birthday for them to open my gift.

But the thing is, even though I can’t use a remote I still try. And yes, I end up deleting DVR’d shows and get stuck on the fishing channel but still. I try. And so obviously I still try to craft. And so far, after nearly 25 years, I’m still straight terrible at it. For the life of me, I cannot come up with creative ideas. I could never just think up something cute and crafty. What I can do (sometimes) is copy. I can copy things that more talented crafters have done as long as it doesn’t include anything complicated. I can tie ribbons, I can paint squares and I can use a toothbrush to splatter paint anything you put in front of me.

But a couple weeks ago I decided to stretch my craftabilities and paint pumpkins. Note that the thought of carving pumpkins did not even cross my mind because using a knife on a hard vegetable isn’t on my resume. So I spent like an hour looking at ideas on pinterest for pumpkin painting. Turns out some people can paint complicated things on pumpkins. Jealous. Anyway, I finally found a few things I liked like a simple zig zag or some polka dots. Those seems straight forward, am I right? How could you mess those up?

Obviously you can or this post would be over by now.

So I went to tape off the zig zag for the pumpkin and all was going well until I finished painting it and realized that the whole spherically-shaped pumpkin thing had apparently thrown me off because dear old zig zag was practically at the bottom of the pumpkin. I look at that pumpkin every day now and I cannot figure out how that happened. Spheres, man. They’ll get you.

Polka dots. I only had those foam brushes (you can only invest so much when you’re a self-proclaimed non-crafter) and turns out those are not the easiest brushes to paint circles with. Totes cray, right? So after attempting like three circles and realizing this was a no good situation, I tried to wipe them off. Also a bad idea. Mostly I just smeared white paint all over one side of the pumpkin. So that pumpkin was off to a great start. Next, I tried making a potato stamp. I had read that you could cut the shape you want into a potato and then use that as a stamp. Again, spherical issues. So I ditched that idea real quick and said sorry to the potato for wasting it. Then I spent about 15 minutes looking for something that could be used as a stamp. Searched the whole dang apartment for a small circular item that could survive having paint all over it. After 15 minutes of fruitless searching (apparently the Heperi’s aren’t much into having small circular items laying around…could have something to do with Levi continually purging my piles of random things, who knows), a lightbulb finally came on in my head! The other end of the foam paintbrush! So I mean, winning. Once I realized I could use the end of the paintbrush, ol’ polka dot pumpkin was done in 2 minutes flat. (Except don’t look at the back of it because it’s still a white smeary mess from the foam and potato polka dot attempts).

And then finally, I had one more pumpkin. I had already done the zig zag and I had already done the polka dots. I was pretty sure there were no more shapes I could confidently pumpkin-ify. I scrolled through the ol’ pinterest and saw that some people would tape off and paint the shape of the state they lived in and then put a little heart on it where they lived. I thought about it for a while and then decided I could challenge myself. I mean, Oklahoma is a fairly simple-shaped state. And so I did it. And after a number of tape recalculations after having made the skinny part of OK way too skinny and almost falling into the spherical trap of putting the state too low like I did on zig zag pumpkin, I succeeded. And I painted. And I hearted. And I won! Then I put the shape of Utah on the back because I mean, I lived there for six years and also it’s practically just a square. And I won at that one as well! I maybe would have liked to do California on there, too, but who are we kidding? My crafting capabilities had been maxed out.

And so there you have it. An adventure in crafting for the ultimate non-crafter. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to decorate the rest of my apartment using Oklahoma-shaped items. Which is truly a bummer.

oy. the gym.

So, in case you were wondering.

We joined a gym. After about three months of a mostly sluggish existence in which the majority of my diet consisted of spaghetti and candy, it was time to make a change. Of course, I like to resist change. So when Levi said it was time to start exercising, I said, “But Leeeeeeeeeeeviiiiiiiii (no really, there were that many e’s and i’s when I said it), it’s too hot outside! We can’t go running outside! I would DIE!” (also yes, these complaints are always said in the most dramatic way possible. Drama is my jam, guys. I’ve been practicing drama voice and sad eyes and stink face since the day I was born. I mastered them all by the time I was 2 and they’ve been a true asset to my success ever since).

Anyway, the gym. I whined and complained because it really was hotter than Hades out there (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase). Also, the locals were telling me that this had been one of Oklahoma’s milder summers, so I had essentially resigned myself to a life of Reese’s peanut butter cups and cookies and was actually super jazzed about it. Surprisingly, Levi was not quite as into my new diet ideas. He himself was requesting more celery, which I responded to with a bit of concern and giant question mark face. Celery is one of the worst vegetables and that’s not just my opinion. That’s actually a fact. Oddly enough, Levi is not aware of that fact. And so I’ve been buying lots of celery lately. But don’t worry, I’ve been telling all the cashiers that it’s not for me, it’s for my husband. You know, in case they start accusing me of eating one of the world’s worst vegetables.

Anyway, the gym. The diet was a no-go with the one member of the family who has the ability to lift the other member of the family and force them to the gym (namely, Levi). So, we were off to the gym. The guy who sold us the gym membership was named something that sounded like Mike Wazowski except I think his name was Joe. He tried telling us all these different deals and how if you do this start-up fee then your monthly fee is only this much!, but if you do this, then wow! You get a free pony! And a number of other things that didn’t actually fly with me because I have mastered the basic art of doing math. So we obviously went with the option that was the cheapest and most logical because again, math.

So like I said, the gym. The reason why I actually do kind of like this gym is because they have those aerobics classes. I know you can all imagine me pumping iron and stuff, but I’ll let you in on a little secret and the secret is that I actually never pump iron. I’ve barely mastered the treadmill and I think that will suffice for now. But like I was saying, those classes. They have Zumba and Body Works Plus Abs (though I could really do without the abs part), Yoga, Water Aerobics, Cycling, and the like. These are good options for me. No, really they are. I like to have someone telling me what to do and forcing me to jump around and do crunches and stuff because we all know what it would be like if I was running my own workout at home (enter: cookies).

Because you see, the gym. If I didn’t have the classes, I would basically be forced to follow Levi around and do whatever he does. Oh, wait I’m sorry, I said that wrong. It would really be more like Levi would be forced to drag me along with him and show me how to do everything. Then, after five minutes of lifting three pound weights, I would be like, hey is it time to go yet? Also have I told you that funny story about my coworker? Also, my hands are sweaty. Wanna hear a joke? And Levi would do that thing where he sighs and rolls his eyes but also smiles and then he would say no. Which is really rude. And then he would make me pick up the five(!) pound weights and then he’d make me do a million crunches and then use a machine that’s probably supposed to be working my abs but really it’s just making me sweat and I’d be whining again and Levi wouldn’t actually get a work out in and it would be zero percent enjoyable for all parties involved (except for anyone watching, I suppose).

Because what I’m trying to say is, the gym. When you go to those classes, you have teachers who are sometimes old and cranky, or sometimes a little bit too hippie, or sometimes even fun. But at the end of the day, none of them are your husband. Which means none of them will still love you even if you whine and complain. And none of them will be amused by your zero effort. And none of them will think it’s funny when you talk about cookies the entire time. They all just make you work. And work constantly. For an hour. Which I guess is good for me. So the moral of this story is that I’m going to let my husband be my husband and let my gym teachers be my gym teachers. Because that’s doing the right thing for everyone. Also because I don’t want any of my gym teachers coming home to dinner with me and telling me to eat more vegetable like Levi does. Because that would be weird.

Although I will admit that it would be pretty hilarious if Levi taught me a Zumba class. In spandex, of course.

update on our current living situation.

So I was thinking that maybe it would be nice to show you how our apartment looks now that we've brought all our stuff into and it's sort of kind of organized now. But then I was looking at my last post and these pictures will basically be exactly the same except that there is now more stuff in the rooms. We haven't been able to get to hanging pictures or anything yet and there are still a lot of things that still need a home within our home, but maybe I'll just show you these pictures anyway. I feel like people always promise to show you pics of their new house or apartment, but then never are able to get around to it. Well, this girl over here is basically going to show you way more pictures of her apartment than you probably ever wanted to see. You're the luckiest. Or maybe I should say I'm sorry? Either way, here you go.

So first, this is the view from outside our front door. We live right next to a golf course and it's really pretty. We also get to see lots of golfers because one of the holes ends right outside our window. We've also seen people cheating because they'll hit one ball and not like where it went and then put down another ball and try again. Okay, so maybe that's not cheating. Maybe it's just extra practice. All I'm saying is that Levi never let's me do that when we play mini golf, so in my book, it's cheating.

Here is our living room. We have no furniture, but we have a TV! Levi and I have a list of items that we need to get but we don't want to just spend all our money right away buying all of the things, so we have them in order of priority. On Saturday we were out running errands and we decided that it would be fine if we let the TV jump a few spots on the priority list and we could get it before a few of the other things. Levi was stoked out of his mind, but he had spent a lot of time studying it out and researching things and then spent another hour asking the sales girl about a million questions and then the TV was selected! And Levi could hardly contain himself! We brought it home and Levi built the TV stand and then set up the TV and it's awesome. Granted, we only have local TV channels and don't actually watch TV anyway, but we were mostly excited because now we can watch movies on something bigger than a laptop! Woo! Plus, Levi has been the very nicest as we've used gift card after gift card to buy all kinds of kitchen appliances and things that I wanted, so he really deserved to use some of the wedding money to get one thing that he really wanted.

Also, as you can see we still have a number of boxes that need to find a home and all of our pictures to hang, but we'll get to it. Also, you may have noticed that lovely banner that I made for Levi's birthday. Am I skilled at cutting out block letters or what?!

Here is our table. We found it on craigslist for a still of a dill. When we went to go look at it, the girl opened the door and Levi was like, "Hey! Good to see you!" For half a second I was like, what the heck, why is Levi sounding especially friendly? Almost as if he already knows this person. Which cannot be possible because we don't know anyone here and I certainly don't recognize her. Turns out, she is one of the people in charge of the Teach For America program out here, so that was actually pretty neat. We took that table and the chairs all the way apart and fit them all into our little car and put it back together in our new apartment. I've been very impressed by the number and size of things that have fit into that car so far. It's pretty amazing.

Anyway, there's also the rest of the kitchen. I love my kitchen. It's so nice and open and a really good size and all the appliances work really well and I have a pantry and a washer and dryer in that closet behind the table and I just love it. I can't get over how blessed we are to be living here.

That's our bed, those are our closets, and that is our bathroom. And yes, of course Levi's closet is all perfectly organized and I still have a few bags looking for a home within our home. But those are mostly winter items, so I'm at a loss right now, okay?!

And finally, Levi's room. No, no. Not Levi's room like where he sleeps. Levi's room as in the extra room that Levi will use to do any school prep and to work on his masters program and to write long and extremely romantic love letters to me, of course. Also for guitar playing. And for storage of many items. We're still working on that.

In closing, I'd like to address the thought that I'm sure you're all thinking. "My, oh my! What a lovely apartment! But what I think is the very nicest are those walls and windows! They look so fabulous! And modern! In fact, they look almost brand new!"  Well, thank you very much for the compliment and I must add that you are quite observant. Because yes indeed. Our windows and walls are very new indeed. These apartments were built in 2002, but our apartment got new walls and windows just last year! Aren't we lucky?! We sure think we are. And we have the 2013 Moore, Oklahoma tornado to thank for such lovely new windows and walls. Apparently the old ones were heavily damaged by TONS of debris and 2x4's that slammed through the windows and walls and basically caused enough damage that they had to be replaced. Sorry, I know that's kind of scary and I can already tell our mothers are not enjoying this paragraph, but we really love it here and know that it is the right place for us to be right now. So we'll just appreciate the new windows and walls and keep on loving our new town.

And there you have it!