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.

#tbt and stuff

So I got this new app on my phone called timehop. Apparently it's not actually that new. But it's new to me and I really love it. It shows you what you did on this date (e.g. January 22)  in history according to facebook, instagram, pics on your phone, etc. Turns out I was quite the social butterfly back in the day. Aka, I was regularly updating my status on facebook, uploading new albums of photos on facebook, and let's face it--blogging a lot more.

Anyway, it's so great because it brings back awesome and hilarious memories from previous years. So over the past few weeks I've been taking a screen shot of some of them and texting them to friends/family involved and it's just been super fun. Also, it's so ridiculous and I am regularly reminded of the weird things I do/did. Mostly did. Here are a few examples of some good ones:

This is a picture of Danielle and it's a pretty good representation of oh...every day of her life. Haha, jokes. More like every day when she had work and school and a budding social life (aka baking and picking up sticks with her bf Dillon). Girl can sleep. A lottttttttt. Like a lotta lotta lot. It's really impressive. But I'd like us all to take a minute and check out that form. I mean, girl. Arms e'erywhere, puffy coat still on, glasses properly placed (hopefully this is after the time I stepped on her glasses and broke them so she had to tape them back together with scotch tape). She probs had a solid three hours to go on this nap. Go get 'em, girl.

This picture was taken just over two years ago, just weeks before Rach had her first bay bay Kenny! What's crazy is that her second bebe is due TOMORROW! Whaaaaa?!?! Totes cray. I just remember this is from one day when we were walking home from BYU together to go hang out at her house (basically I force my friends to hang out with me, even if they're super preggo). All I know is Rachel kept laughing when we were walking home and I was legitimately afraid she was going to like go into labor or something. (Hey Rach! I hope you go into labor while reading this! Best friend of the year goes to me!)

And finally, this picture. Holy cow, this is just a perfect representation of everything that was our freshman year at BYU. Can you even believe this was SIX years ago?! Ugh, I hate that...I'm seriously ancient now. It seems like this was just last year or something. Freshman year was basically constant craziness, high energy, screaming, laughing, pranking, partying, and zero sleep. I want to just say I often try to remember when the heck I did homework and what the heck I ate. I honestly cannot figure out how I still managed to get good grades. Anyway, I think this picture is from one time when we were going to like an 80's dance or something. At the time, we were obsessed with show 24 and I think we were trying to act like two teenage girls that were in the first season. The sad thing is, we were pretending to be extra goofy looking, but I'm pretty sure I have approximately one billion other pictures of us with essentially the same faces/attitude/sassiness. I don't know, chock it up to being 19 and living on my own for the first time.

Also, look. It's a selfie from before selfies were a thing. #winning

part two-lio, foolio.

good news. more wedding pics! plus this one above is definitely one of my very favorites.

these ones are from after we came out of the temple and all our family and friends were there to meet us and celebrate with us. It was SUCH a fun and happy experience and I just loved having everyone there with us. I was so lucky to have so many friends and family there who had traveled long distance (California! New York! South Carolina! Missouri! New Mexico! Nevada! New Zealand! And beyond!) Both Levi and I just felt so blessed that day and so so happy that our wedding day had finally arrived. We waited a long time for this day. I still remember when I first set up a countdown app on my phone and there was 187 days on it. I thought for sure I would die before the day ever came.

But somehow we made it. And everything came together and was just the loveliest. All the details came together with the help of so many friends and family and we were just able to enjoy the day. And there are SO many pictures I love from this day! So that's why we now have part 2 of this big fat series of wedding posts.

But before I get to that, I've just been thinking this morning about how much I appreciate having Levi in my life. You're probably getting tired of hearing about this, but unfortunately I'm not tired of talking about it, so here you go: Levi. Teach for America takes forevvvvver and is ridiculously draining for him. I know they have really good intentions but sometimes I think they're going a little overboard. I mean, 6:30 am-8:30 pm seems just a little excessive. I still think it's a really great program, so what I'm trying to get at is I'm really proud of Levi for sticking with it. And then coming home and being with me and genuinely appreciating that part of the day and for spending time with me and not just passing out like he totally deserves to. He's also so on top of things and so responsible so that he doesn't have to do lesson planning when he's at home if he can at all help it--and if he does have to do stuff at home, we do it together and it's actually kind of fun (you should see the really beautiful chart I made for the class--super proud of it.)

Anyway, Levi gets tomorrow off (wooooooooooo!) and then he only has two more weeks of summer institute training and then we get to move into our new apartment and Levi gets to start working with the actual school he will be working at and we'll FINALLY get all of our stuff and can settle in and it will be glorious. (Turns out eating spaghetti 43 days in a row isn't so good for the digestive system. I want my dishes so I can make real food!) We really like it here in OKC but we're definitely ready to settle down in our recently acquired apartment down in Moore. And before anyone freaks out, yes I know. That's where the tornado was last year and yes I know. There were two conference talks about it and yes I know. The ward we'll be in is the ward that was hit by the tornado and yes I know. There were other places to live and yes I know it all. But what you don't know is that the missionaries literally live in the building right next to us as in WE'RE NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS and another set of missionaries live just across the golf course and I'm not saying anything but I am saying that I feel like living next to the missionaries is a really good choice when you're dealing with tornados. BAM, winning.

But all jokes aside, don't worry we'll be safe.

Anyway, you're all here for the pictures, so here you go!

also these next three pictures are hilarious to me for some reason. It's like Levi and his dad are both confused and then they're like, oh hey! hugs!

seriously, such a great day.

and again, photos by the lovely Lindsey Orton!